The American economy has slowed down more rapidly than what we all expected. Even the best economists did not predict the current scenario. With the entire globe seems to be heading for a recession, the employment outlook for Connecticut is no different. The situation looks bleak and it grows grim as each day passes by. All figures collected by Connecticut Department of Labor show how each day brings in more tightness in the present period of contracting employment.
In the last year itself, while the employment downturn for US has been steep, for Connecticut the loss of jobs has been higher than the national average. All figures point towards a deteriorating state economy for Connecticut as the total output continues to grow at an anemic rate. However, unlike Michigan, California, Florida and Ohio, Connecticut might just skip through a terrible recession as the type of jobs offered in the State are different than those suffering the worst of the downturn. The good news is that the overall predictions for the next two years show only modest job losses for the State – some economists have estimated this to be at around 7,000 jobs. The growth in total output is estimated to average a meager 1.8% over two years.
The major job losses are predicted to occur in manufacturing field. There will be also some modest job losses in construction and government. Other fields like services, financial services, trade and other sectors might see some job creations. Unfortunately, this might not be enough to offset the present job losses occurring in Connecticut. The estimates show that employment grew at 0.4% but in 2009 it is expected to decline at 0.3%. The dragging employment growth rate shows how the new entrants to the labor force will fail to find any place which in turn points towards fall in Real Manufacturing Earnings. This translated would mean lower expected bonuses and also erosion in employment gains.
The negative drop in jobs in the government employment sector is justified by the sluggishness in the economy leading to significant tightening of fiscal capacity. Yet in 2008, this sector added 4,367 jobs and gave some relief to the existing crisis. In the construction industry that has already seen a decline in unit housing permits, things might grow still worse with interest rate cuts declared by the Federal Reserve. Employment remained flat in the residential construction arena in 2008 and in 2009 it is expected to reduce only by .75%. The non-residential sector fares better and its strength may help to eventually make up the losses to some extent in the residential sector.
The growth rates in Trade, Transport, Public utilities, Finance Insurance and Real Estate are expected to remain small yet positive. It is only the Service sector that shows some good news for the year 2009. This sector is estimated to grow at .11% in 2008-09. The health sector has shown most progression in the previous year when 6,233 new health care jobs were created by the sector in the first quarter of 2008. Most of these job gains were seen at the hospital, nursing and residential care facilities as well as ambulatory care. We hope to see things take a turn for the better in future!
