CT's Recovery, Analysis of Unemployment Comparison Data Shows, Is Nation's Best

By one measure, Connecticut’s recovery is better than every other state in the nation. The state ranks first when judged by the number of unemployment claims since the start of the pandemic, when compared with data from a year ago.

In an analysis by the financial services website WalletHub, Connecticut ranked first among states whose “unemployment claims are recovering the quickest.”  Connecticut had 444,776 initial filings between the week of March 16, 2020 and the week of June 29, 2020 vs. 56,546 between the week of March 18, 2019 and the week of July 1, 2019.  That increase, 786.5%, was less than every other state.

There are still 17.8 million Americans unemployed due to the COVID-19 pandemic in total. Last week, there were 1.3 million new unemployment claims nationwide, compared to 6.9 million during the peak of the pandemic (an 81% reduction), the website noted. 

To identify which states’ workforces are experiencing the quickest recovery from COVID-19, WalletHub compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia across various metrics based on changes in unemployment claims. The top ten, the analysis indicated, were Connecticut, Oregon, New Jersey, Vermont, Arkansas, Wyoming, Wisconsin, California, Illinois, and Montana.

When looking at which states “recovered most” when comparing the past week with last year, Connecticut ranked 10th, as unemployment filings continued to drop as more businesses opened and jobs returned.  There were 12,369 initial claims filed during the week of June 29, 2020 as compared with 3,551 the week of July 1, 2019, and increase of 248.3%.  The lowest increase was in Oregon, the highest in Georgia.

Connecticut also ranked as having the second quickest recovery when comparing the number of initial unemployment claims filed last week versus the first week of 2020, just behind Oregon.  There were 12,369 claims filed the week of June 29, 2020 vs 7,852 the week of January 1, 2020; an increase of 57.5%, according to the WalletHub data. 

The overall data which ranked Connecticut first refers to the change in the number of unemployment insurance initial claims between the weeks of March 16, 2020 to June 29, 2020, compared to the weeks of March 18, 2019 to July 1, 2019.  Data used to create the rankings were obtained from the U.S. Department of Labor, according to WalletHub.