Business & Tech

Is Connecticut's Declining Unemployment Rate a Smoke-Screen?

The latest numbers say 7.9% of the state's workforce is jobless, but a new report contends that the underlying cause is that many have temporarily given up.

The state's unemployment rate is creeping down — 7.9% in the third quarter of 2013 — but the underlying cause doesn't inspire confidence: many among the jobless have simply stopped looking.

According to a story in the Hartford Courant, a UConn Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis report released today posits that 65,000 adults of working age in the state have stopped searching for a job in the past three years as the economy has tanked.

"Recent trends in declining participation rates are apt to be reversed," the report said, "making unemployment rates increasingly unlikely to decline — recovery might even raise the reported rate."

The report called the 7.9% number "a smoke screen on the true situation ... If participation were still at the level of the second quarter of 2010, the unemployment rate would be 10.7 percent."

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The report also said that unemployment is poised to skyrocket again if many of these workers resume their search for full-time work. Presumably, more state or federal investment in stimulus projects such as opening bids on projects that have already been approved but not funded would bring these workers off the sidelines.

Are you a Connecticut worker sitting on the sidelines waiting for a better jobs climate before resuming a search for full-time work? Tell us in the comments below.

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