The state’s unemployment rate would approach a gloomy 11 percent if more than 64,000 people hadn’t left the workforce since mid-2010, the University of Connecticut’s economic think-tank reported today.
And while the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis recognized Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s efforts to grow the economy, it said the budget deficits that have been projected after the next election, coupled with a failure to invest enough in the state’s infrastructure, remain big obstacles.
While the state Labor Department released a 7.6 percent jobless rate late last week, the center’s latest quarterly analysis called it “superficially encouraging” and “misleading” because of how much the state’s workforce is shrinking.
“The SA (seasonally adjusted) figure is a smoke screen on the true situation,” the center wrote. “The improving unemployment rate is, in large measure, an artifact of declining participation.”
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