Private employment at all-time high

Private sector employment employment in Connecticut is at an all-time high on the back of jobs added in May according to the Connecticut Department of Labor (DOL). The recently released May jobs report revealed employers added an estimated 4,7000 jobs during that month.

As of May 2024, there are an estimated 1,476,100 payroll jobs in the state, nearly 10,000 jobs above the previous peak from December 2018. At that time, there were 1,466,500 payroll jobs available.

According to the DOL, Connecticut’s payroll employment is now estimated to be at 104.3 percent of pre-pandemic employment.

The May jobs report also marks five months of job growth during 2024. Private sector employers have added an average of 3,043 jobs per month.

Six major employment industry sectors saw job gains in May 2024: leisure and hospitality, which grew by 1.2 percent; education and health services, which grew by o.4 percent; professional and business services, which grew by 0.5 percent; information, which grew by 2 percent; and government, which grew by 0.2 percent.

The sectors saw a decrease in jobs during the previous month: manufacturing, which decreased by 0.3 percent; financial activities, which decreased by 0.2 percent; and “other services,” a category for services that don’t fit into classification systems used to measure economic activity, which decreased by 0.6 percent.

According to the jobs report, public sector employment still has not fully recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic. As of May 2023, government had gained an estimated 500 jobs over the previous months, rising to 234, 900 jobs. Employment in the public sector is 1 percent higher than a year ago and has recovered 90.3 percent since April 2020, the last month before employment was affected by COVID-19.

Nonfarm employment also rose by 0.3 percent in May and is 1.1 percent higher than a year ago. Nonfarm employment has recovered to 104.3 percent of pre-pandemic levels.

The state’s unemployment rate decreased slightly, by 0.1 percent to 4.3 percent. That rate remains higher than the unemployment rate from a year ago, which was 3.3 percent.