While  30 states added jobs in April, in 21, the [...]]]> The Bureau of Labor Statistics summed up all the state jobs reports today, and it shows Connecticut was one of only nine states that added enough jobs in April that the agency’s economists are confident the growth is more than just noise in the data.

While  30 states added jobs in April, in 21, the growth was small enough in 21 of them that it’s not statistically significant.

The places that were adding jobs fastest in April were Colorado, Hawaii, Missouri and Nevada.

Still, Nevada has a much longer way to go than Connecticut to return to economic health. It has the highest unemployment in the nation, at 9.6 percent.

Even though Connecticut’s unemployment rate, at 8 percent, sounds worse than the nation’s 7.5 percent, the BLS, which is the collector of the data, says because of the small sample size of the survey, those two numbers have no statistically significant difference.

The release Thursday from the state Department of Labor was an encouraging report, said economist Pete Gioia, with the Connecticut Business and Industry Association. But he said the state needs to add [...]]]> Connecticut’s employers hired briskly in April, as both private companies and government employers added positions, for a combined total of 6,300 new jobs.

The release Thursday from the state Department of Labor was an encouraging report, said economist Pete Gioia, with the Connecticut Business and Industry Association. But he said the state needs to add 25,000 jobs a year, rather than the 10,800 year-over-year improvement through April.

The last time the state added jobs that quickly was 1997, though the state broke the 20,000 mark in 1999 and in 2006.

“Let me see four or five of these in a row,” Gioia said. Jobs numbers for Connecticut have been quite erratic in the last several years, with promising months soon followed by terrible ones.

The unemployment rate, which is estimated by a different survey with a smaller sample size, remained at 8 percent in April. It hasn’t changed appreciably in Connecticut in the last year. In the U.S. in April, the unemployment rate was 7.5 percent.

The state has recovered less than half the jobs lost from 2008 to 2010, while the country as a whole is 70 percent of the way back to pre-recession job levels.

“We’ve got a ways to go,” Gioia said. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”

In the first four months of 2013, the state has already added more than the 8,600 jobs added all year in 2012.

Kim Olsen, who lost her job running MetLife’s mortgage operations in Connecticut when the office closed in March 2012, got back to work in January.

Olsen, who had opened the MetLife office in 2009, took a step down in responsibility when she became a mortgage processor for PrimeLending, when it opened a new office in Danbury.

A former coworker is running that office — Olsen said all of her 35 or so colleagues from MetLife who wanted to work again have returned to work.

She gets to work from home in Middletown, and only had to take a roughly 10 percent pay cut, but she noted the MetLife job was a step down in pay from the job she held for 13 years in Chase Bank.

“I’ve been on this downward slide for five years now,” said Olsen, 48. “I’m going in the wrong direction.”

Average hourly earnings in the state are down 1.2 percent from a year earlier.

Gioia said the small and medium-sized businesses that make up the bulk of CBIA’s membership have been somewhat more positive about the economy lately, but he said: “The big overhang question with a lot of companies I think is Obamacare.”

Construction is finally lifting the economy, both locally and nationally. The number of jobs in construction is up nearly 8 percent compared to a year ago, the fastest job growth in any sector. Hotels and restaurants were second, with almost 6 percent more jobs than a year ago.

Two important, well-paying sectors in the state have fewer jobs than they did a year ago — manufacturing and finance and insurance.

George Worrall III, has been looking for work since January, when he had to leave his civilian, full-time job with the Air National Guard because he left the National Guard. He served in the military for nearly 29 years, reaching the rank of lietenant colonel.

Worrall, 47, was the only source of income for his family of four, as his wife has been a stay-at-home mother for 10 years. She has looked for jobs, too, recently, but he thinks he has more earning potential.

He said he had an interview Wednesday for a  commission-only job doing insurance estimates for storm damages around the state. If the homeowners chose the restoration company he represented, he would be paid.

“The potential for income is really good, I kind of like the idea of being outside,” Worrall said. “You can set your own schedule.”

Worrall has applied to dozens of jobs, many in marketing, where the bulk of his experience has been, but in every case, only got automated replies.

“You read about a position, you say, ‘Wow that sounds pretty interesting,’ tweak your resume to make sure it highlights what they’re looking for, write a new cover letter. None of those blind applications have worked.”

One with LEGO, that seemed like a really good match with his experience, not only didn’t lead to an interview, he saw it readvertised this week after he applied months ago.

He drove up from his home in East Hampton to two job fairs in East Hartford in the last month, one specifically for veterans, but he said the face-to-face networking doesn’t seem to provide much of an edge.

“I even noticed at the job fair, the name tags didn’t have last names on them,” he said, and the cards the recruiters handed him just directed him to online portals.

He said one of the marketing jobs listed at the booth for Mohegan Sun had been filled before the fair.

The only two interviews came from job fairs, both for commission-only sales jobs.

“It seems like there’s so many people out looking,” he said.

Still, Worrall considers himself fortunate. He’s collecting a military pension, and another $22 a week in unemployment.

“We certainly had to make a lot of personal changes at home, in order to live without two-thirds of our salary we’re used to,” he said. But he knows many families don’t have savings to draw on, as they did.

They looked at how bad job losses were in [...]]]> Economists at the Federal Reserve ran a study to isolate how much the shrinking labor force has to do with demographic changes — fewer high school and college students working part-time jobs, and Baby Boomers reaching retirement age — and how much is the economy.

They looked at how bad job losses were in each state, and how each state’s labor force composition changed, in the recessions in the 80s, 90s and this last Great Recession. It also looked at how long it took for a rebound as job growth    helped states rebuild their job bases.

According to the chart that explains at what happened from January 2008 through February 2010, Connecticut is an outlier. Its job losses were particularly bad —  only 14 states had a greater percentage loss — but its labor participation grew during the period. In fact, only six states had growth in their labor forces in those years,  and four of them had smaller job losses than Connecticut. (Nevada, which had far more dramatic job losses, also had a growing labor force.

A recent Bureau of Labor Statistics Analysis  shows that the average union worker in March 2011 earned $23.02 hourly, or nearly $48,000 a year, and the average non-union worker earned $19.51 hourly, [...]]]> From 2001 to 2011, through one mild recession and one huge one, union workers maintained their wage edge compared to all other workers.

A recent Bureau of Labor Statistics Analysis  shows that the average union worker in March 2011 earned $23.02 hourly, or nearly $48,000 a year, and the average non-union worker earned $19.51 hourly, or about $40,600 a year.

The wage difference varied over the 11 years, but there was an average $3.88 an hour advantage to union members.

Union members’ wages actually rose slower than those who aren’t in unions — up 25 percent over 11 years compared to 32 percent — but both groups’ wage gains were far smaller than the inflation in employers’ benefit costs.

The amount companies spent on insurance, retirement and paid days off grew 46 percent during the period for non-union workers and 55 percent for union members.

Where the unions really deliver for their members is in benefits. By 2011, the average value of all fringe benefits  – health insurance, dental insurance, vacations, pension, paid sick leave, disability coverage, employer matches on 401(K) plans —  was $14.67 an hour for union members.

By contrast, the 87 percent of workers who aren’t represented by unions received $7.56 an hour in fringe benefits. The union members’ benefits were worth almost twice as much.

Among unionized workers, 93 percent have health insurance offered by their employers, and 69 percent of non-union workers do.

The big differences — 70 percent of unionized workers in the private sector have traditional pensions. For those who work outside government, and are not in a union, just 14 percent have pensions.

In many cases, those workers have no support for retirement outside Social Security — just 59 percent have an employer contribution to a 401(k).

The company is looking for people who will shelve goods, wait on customers and clean, with days and nights available. Over 18, no criminal records. The company asks that candidates “work with a sense of [...]]]> Tab Retail Remodeling will interview candidates from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. today at the Hamden CT Works, 37 Marne St.

The company is looking for people who will shelve goods, wait on customers and clean, with days and nights available. Over 18, no criminal records. The company asks that candidates “work with a sense of urgency and come to work everyday with a smile.” Both day and night shifts available.

Ability to lift up to 60 pounds is required.

The state is lending $3 million to Cannondale, two-thirds of which is forgivable if the company adds 75 people over four years.

The state will borrow the money by issuing bonds [...]]]> Cannondale, a bicycle manufacturer, is expanding its Connecticut workforce by about 50 percent over the next four years, my colleague Ken Gosselin reports.

The state is lending $3 million to Cannondale, two-thirds of which is forgivable if the company adds 75 people over four years.

The state will borrow the money by issuing bonds and lend it to the company at 2 percent over 10 years.

The likelihood of layoffs at Pratt & Whitney is high, according to a company email sent Friday to alert salaried workers of a new round of buyouts.

In the email, obtained by The Courant, Pratt & Whitney President David P. Hess said [...]]]> My colleague Brian Dowling is writing about downsizing at Pratt. Here’s his story:

The likelihood of layoffs at Pratt & Whitney is high, according to a company email sent Friday to alert salaried workers of a new round of buyouts.

In the email, obtained by The Courant, Pratt & Whitney President David P. Hess said that the buyouts “will most likely be followed by involuntary reductions.”

The cuts are needed, Hess said in the email, because the company is winding down its longtime military engine programs — its F100 and F117 engines — and because sales of spare engine parts are “especially difficult due to global uncertainty.” The email also cites uncertainty related to defense budget cuts.

A Pratt spokesman on Friday confirmed there would be buyouts and said he expected “several hundred” to accept the offer. Neither the spokesman nor the email said how many positions the company needs to cut.

Because big aerospace and defense companies get their business from long-term programs that run for years and then wind down, it is often difficult to coordinate one program’s beginning with a comparable program’s end.

The new business is still a few years off for the East Hartford engine maker, which has two huge programs on the horizon: the military’s Joint Strike Fighter and the handful of commercial applications of its PurePower Geared Turbofan engine.

“Pratt & Whitney has achieved tremendous success in recent years, winning new platforms and sales campaigns across all our markets,” Hess said in the email to employees. “However, because we are a long-cycle business, we will not benefit from these investments for several years, and need to continue our focus on near-term business challenges.”

Hess listed what the company has done in recent years to manage costs: selling businesses, consolidating plants, restricting hiring, decreasing contracted personnel, reducing discretionary spending, and restricting company travel.

He encouraged all eligible salaried employees to consider the “voluntary separation program.” He said more details about the program are forthcoming.

Hartford-based United Technologies Corp., Pratt’s parent company, has said in regulatory filings that it expects to shave 3,000 jobs this year through layoffs, early retirement or normal attrition. It also plans to exit 1.85 million square feet of facilities.

In total, the company expects to cut 7,000 jobs and close to 2.5 million square feet of space in the two-year restructuring plan, which began at the start of 2012 and is expected to conclude by the end of 2013. About 4,000 jobs were cut in 2012.

UTC, at the end of 2012, employed about 218,000 people worldwide at 4,000 locations in 71 countries.

The [...]]]> An industry trade magazine has a forecast that both business and leisure bookings will be strong at U.S. hotels this summer. The accompanying article only quotes hotel properties in Florida, California, Nevada and the Midwest, but if it’s true in New England, it could help restore hours and lead to hiring in this state.

The last local insight we had into this question wasn’t promising.  The manager of a Southbury Crowne Plaza that’s almost exclusively dependent on business travelers said then:

“We used to run 64 percent occupancy,” Ehab Mehany said. “We used to be sold out Monday through Thursday. Now the hotel’s only full on Tuesday.”

He said occupancy is 48 percent now. The hotel used to have $8 million in annual revenue, he said, and now it’s $4 million.

“We used to have over 110 employees,” he said. Now it’s about 80.

To read more about the Connecticut hospitality industry, go here.

Clark wrote on Harvard Business Review about how others with master’s and PhDs in Classics, South American [...]]]> Dorie Clark, who has consulted for Yale, Google and others, got a master’s degree in theological studies, and then saw her dream of becoming a professor squashed by getting rejected by all the PhD programs she applied to.

Clark wrote on Harvard Business Review about how others with master’s and PhDs in Classics, South American literature or philosophy can market themselves to employers.

Check it out.