Business & Tech

Report: DC 'Shocks' Have Stagnated Job Growth in CT

State has gained about 60,000 jobs shed during the Great Recession, but blunders by the federal government have slowed the recovery.

Blunders made at the U.S. Capitol may have cost Connecticut a year’s worth of economic recovery,according to the University of Connecticut’s quarterly economic journal The Connecticut Economy.

While Connecticut has recovered about half of the 120,000 jobs shed during the Great Recession, “artificial uncertainty” injected into the economy through political wrangling in Washington, D.C, has led to a more sluggish recovery, the quarterly reports.

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An additional 20,000 jobs were not added in the state as a result of the uncertainty created by several political events, according to the CT Mirror, quoting the journal’s editor Steven P. Lanza at a presentation at in Hartford Tuesday.

An economic policy uncertainty index created by economists at Stanford University and the University of Chicago states that job growth weakened after certain “economic shocks” took place, such as the 2010 extension of the Bush-era tax cuts, the near-shutdown of the federal government in 2011, the actual federal government shutdown in 2013 and the fiscal cliff of January 2013, according to Lanza.

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The damage from the shocks seemed to peak after 9 months, but the effects could extend for as long as three years, according to CT News Junkie.

Lanza said the state’s economy has been improving and he was hopeful in the absence of more shocks that Connecticut jobs might return at a rate of 6,300 per quarter.

Much of the job gains, however, have been in retail, which pays lower wage, while there have been job losses in the financial services, construction and manufacturing areas, the Mirror reports.


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