Connecticut Economist: Job Recovery Won't Happen Until 2016, At Earliest

Last week the state's Department of Labor reported that unemployment in Connecticut had fallen to 8.6 percent in December.

The figure, however, doesn't account for those who are unemployed but no longer looking work, economist Don Klepper-Smith told the New Haven Register.

The Durham resident, who serves as chief economist at DataCore Partners in New Haven, said Connecticut has only recovered one-quarter of the job losses in the three-and-a-half years since the recovery began.

"Even if we were to assume a ‘robust job scenario’ of roughly 2,000 new jobs each month going forward as we did in the 1980s, we’re still not likely to see full job recovery in Connecticut until mid-2016 at the earliest," he told the paper.

Klepper-Smith tells the New London Day that the true unemployment rate in Connecticut is 14.4 percent.

Nationally, the official unemployment rate is 7.9 percent. In Hamden, there were 2,409 people unemployed in December out of a working population of 31,766, for a town unemployment rate of 7.6 percent, according to state Department of Labor figures.

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