Thursday, October 05, 2006

More Lousy Economic News

Remember back when Connecticut was an economic powerhouse, with plenty of good-paying jobs and a growth rate that was the envy of the nation?

Yeah, me neither.

There's more depressing news on the economic front out today, according to a new FDIC report:
Connecticut ranked 45th in job growth, though the state's unemployment rate of 4 percent was better than the national average. Many New England states have experienced slow job and population growth, Driscoll said.

Unlike much of the country, Connecticut and Massachusetts still have not fully recovered the jobs lost from the recession five years ago, Driscoll said. The higher cost of living makes it tougher to attract new residents, he said. AP)

The housing market is cooling off, too, which is good news for the middle class (if bad news for construction companies).

Source
"Housing prices, job growth slow in Connecticut, report says." Associated Press 5 October, 2006.

23 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah--4% unemployment really does s*ck.

Genghis Conn said...

That's the good news. But ranking 45th in job growth is worrisome.

Anonymous said...

with regard to population, is it fair to say that CTs has had little to no population growth over the past 5-15 years?

And if so, if you back out 1st generation immigrants moving from NYC to Fairfield County (Stmfd, Nrwlk, Bport), then has CT had a net loss of "natives?" Are the high school / college grads leaving in droves?

I've read two different stories about these two topics, but have not seen the two linked.

Anonymous said...

Raise taxes...that should help the situation! Maybe Ned could throw a few milion into the state coffers to help our economy instead of his flailing campaign. At the end of the day both him and Schlesinger will be losers but at least Mr. Gold wouldn't have lost millions of dollars in the process. Hey what happened to all the Lamont people?

Anonymous said...

Why are liberal havens such as Mass and CT and VT losing people????

Red states are growing gangbusters.

You cannot tax and spend your way to prosperity. An older couple,raised their family in CT, then promptly moved to South Carolina. Taxes are half what they are here for twice the house.

NH is doing well, even little RI recently lowered taxes, to be more competitive.

As long as liberals and RINOS like Rell are in charge, Ct will continue to lose.

Anonymous said...

Doesn't Jodi Rell have an ad that touts her job's creation record? Which is it? Either she has created a ton of new jobs or she hasn't.

Anonymous said...

Does this make Jodi Rell's job growth ads false advertising?

Anonymous said...

This will be some news to Jodi Rell, who's been waltzing around talking about how Connecticut's a national leader in job growth.

And the 45/50 ranking is more like 45/48 - you can't seriously consider the economics of Mississippi and Louisiana because the after effects of Katrina really devestated any prospect of job growth there.

Anonymous said...

Someone on an earlier thread announced that the DCCC had puled out o fct-5. Today they announced a 300k ad buy in that district. So whoever said it was full of crap.

Anonymous said...

21 American kids dead in Iraq in the first 4 days of October.The blood on Liebermans hands can never be washed off.

Stay the course?

Anonymous said...

Does this make Jodi Rell's job growth ads false advertising? No, Rell's people discounted the FDIC report last time around and I'm sure they'll tell you this report is off base too. Drink the kool-aid with the natural sweetener known as Jodi Rell.

Anonymous said...

NEWS FLASH!!!

The Drudge report is saying in a copyrighted story that the whole Foley/page thing was a prank by the page which went awry when the instant messages fell into the hands of some opposing political operatives. Drudge posted it at 2:53pm Thursday.

Anonymous said...

The argument about taxes in southern states is so bogus its funny. The main reason southern states are more affordable isn't taxes, its housing prices. I really think we'd all be thrilled if Jodi Rell could reduce all of our property values for us.

Anonymous said...

Employees will drive great distances to work in the south just a some live close to work..please turfgrrl, deal in reality a

Anonymous said...

In the face of these numbers, how can Jodi Rell run ads touting Connecticut as a leader in job growth?

And what's up with the print media that they won't flesh out the truth?

Anonymous said...

Oh, hell, I guess John DeStefano is right after all. It's hopeless. We're dead. Hell, we're almost more worse off than Mississippi and Alabama, sort of kinda. Oh, the agony, the agony.

It's too painful to go on. Let's just end it all. Why should we suffer when we can give ourselves a billion-dollar lethal injection of new taxes and check out completely?

O Death, where is thy sting?

Anonymous said...

Imperial Senator Joe Lieberman not only thinks it's a wonderful idea to send his subjects kids off to die in the deserts of Iraq he also believes having sex with commoners 16 yr old kids is something the washingtonians,like himself,are also entitiled to.

Lieberman wants your Republican votes so bad he's now defending Hasterts role in the Foley Pedifile case.

Anonymous said...

Republican Governor Rell fails again. No leadership, no vision, no idea what to do. Good luck in the debate.

My conclusion, Rell will have a lot more reading days next year.

GMR said...

Taxes are a factor, but I don't think they are the major reason why Connecticut's population growth and job growth are lower than the south and west.

It is costlier to do business in New England than in the South and West. There are many reasons for this -- some governmental and some environmental.

We're very anti-growth, or at least the anti-growth folks have enough influence to drive up the cost of doing business.

Look at electric prices. New England has much higher prices than the rest of the country, way more than the cost of transporting coal or oil or whatever from there to here. We need more power plants, but that's very politically untenable. Geez, in New York state, they routinely talk of shutting down Indian Point, which produces 11% of New York state's power.

Housing. It's damned expensive here. That's not all anti-growth folks fault: there's a lack of space, we can't sprawl southwards into Long Island sound. But there are also local groups that manage to put up barriers to new development. It's traffic, it's open space, it's the schools, or whatever. Look at Stamford: every time someone has proposed some new development that is walking distance from the RR station, there's some group against it. If we can't build near the RR station, where in the heck is a good place to build?

And traffic. I-95 may just be too expensive to ever realistically expand, but there's no excuse for not having built Super 7 or for widening the Meritt. The state owns the land already. It's environmentalists that block these developments at every turn, which makes our infrastructure worse, makes it more difficult for people to live further from Stamford, Norwalk or Greenwich. Geez, we can't build an exit ramp that goes from 7 to the Merritt without some no growth group objecting and getting an injunction.

Anonymous said...

Bring back Ronald Reagan?!?

Gabe said...

Just for the record, there is a really good reason why people keep suggesting that Indian Point be closed - its a nuclear power plant, a short distance from NYC, that happens to be built on a fault line.

Anonymous said...

Gabe, should we close California?

Anonymous said...

Why Rell Will Win 
October 19, 2006
Some people say Gov. M. Jodi Rell will defeat John DeStefano Jr. in the race for governor because she is a nice lady. Others say she will win because, after the Rowland scandals, Rell and her modesty are refreshing. Still others say that Connecticut likes to vote for women and a woman incumbent is almost unbeatable. None of that is untrue. But none of it is the big reason Rell will win. The big reason Rell will win was on display in her televised debate with DeStefano on Wednesday night: She has her feet on the ground

This comment from the Rell campaign website has about as much content as her entire campaign. Rell will win because she is a nice lady? WOW, I sure hope the people of the State of Connecticut expect more out of their Governor! Her entire campaign has been a no substance zone. It’s about the same as all that she has done since becoming Governor after being second in command of the most corrupt administration in Connecticut history! Oh yeah, I didn’t forget that…not do I believe she had “no idea” what was going on.

So, here she is our Governor. Elected in her own right. I go on her official website and all I see is Gov. Rell to sign a proclomation decaling it pick your nose day and decalring it joe schmoe day. C’mon, we still pay the highest prices for Gasoline, home heating oil, natural gas and electricity. The cost of living in this State are astronomical! The energy companies just walked all over her to get what they wanted. Because she is a nice lady. Fees and the cost of doing business in this State are driving businesses elsewhere! It costs far more to form an LLC in Connecticut than almost anywhere els. Then after you spent all of the money putting this together, you get smacked with a “business entity tax” (which by the way is more of a fee than a tax because you owe it immediately) out of the blue that noone tells you about. I wil NEVER form another corporate entity here in Connecticut again. I will go to Delaware or Nevada where they don’t have quite a preditorial view on businesses.

So, Gov. Rell is a very nice lady, and she is not corrupt after John Rowland got caught. However it is obvious that she is not strong enough to be a Governor and she is NOT doing a very good job at running this State.