CT Unemployment Claims Paint Picture Of State's Slow Recovery

CONNECTICUT —As the coronavirus continues to crush spirits and drain bank accounts in the new year, Connecticut has shown resourcefulness in mitigating its spread and agility in rolling out the vaccine to counter it.

Where the state lags significantly behind its neighbors is in the category of small business recovery. As of Oct. 22, employment rates among workers in the bottom wage quartile decreased by 23.5 percent compared to January 2020, according to Opportunity Insights, a research and policy institute based at Harvard University that is tracking the economic turmoil caused by the pandemic. The numbers were not seasonally adjusted.

About one in three small businesses have closed their doors in Connecticut since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. In New York and New Jersey and the nation as a whole, about one in four small businesses have closed.

At the top of the pandemic last spring, the state had only regained about 90 percent of the 120,300 jobs lost during the 2007-2009 recession, according to data collected by the Connecticut Labor Department. The state's current count of about 1.6 million jobs is the lowest it has been since 1996.

Workers across every sector got pink slipped as their employers either went under or cut back as they attempted to predict just how long and how bad the pandemic would be. That can be clearly seen in the sudden large spike in unemployment benefits claims in March:

Click on the name of the industry, or on a line in the graph, to highlight it:

Predictably, claims in the Accommodations & Food Services industry jumped high and fast at the start of the coronavirus outbreak, but so, surprisingly, did those from workers in Health Care & Social Assistance.

As can be seen in the break-out below, the state's self-employed have had a particularly rocky row to hoe during the pandemic, making 49,682 claims in the beginning of July 2019, and another 26,191 about a month later.

Note that the initial claims reported in these charts are "processed" claims to the extent that duplicates and "reopened" claims have been eliminated.

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As might be predicted, the higher the level of education, the more job-secure Connecticut residents have been during the pandemic — with one exception. Those without a high school diploma have fared significantly better than those who graduated from high school but did not move on to college, according to the state Department of Labor.

March and April, the beginning of the pandemic, saw the largest spike in unemployment claims, but the DoL indicates the state has been steadily, if slowly, clawing its way back. Connecticut has regained 64.5 percent of the jobs lost in those two months.

It's been the case with plagues and other natural disasters throughout history, and the script hasn't changed for COVID-19 in Connecticut: The rich got richer, and the poor, poorer. Workers making less than $20,000 annually filed over 71,000 unemployment claims in the first month of the pandemic, and still lead the category turning the corner int0 2021.

Note that the unemployment claims visualized above represent only one component of the unemployed. Claims do not account for those not covered under the Unemployment system, such as federal workers, railroad workers or religious workers.