New employment numbers released today by the state Labor Department show Connecticut is still gaining back some of the jobs lost when parts of the economy shut down in the spring because of the pandemic. The state added back 17,000 jobs in September. But the month-to-month rate of that jobs recovery is slowing, and the state is still far from getting back all of the jobs lost in April. The state is still more than 100,000 jobs short of where it was a year ago, before the pandemic. Connecticut’s official unemployment rate was 7.8 percent for the month of September. That is close to the official unemployment rate nationwide. But the pandemic has caused ongoing problems with data collection, and the state Labor Department says the real unemployment rate could be as high as thirteen percent for last month. Some workers who should have been classified as temporarily unemployed, were instead classified as employed, but away from work because of illness.
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