Jobless rate falls, more jobs coming

HARTFORD, Conn. (WTNH) -- A mistake in Connecticut labor numbers has made Governor Malloy very happy tonight and another company is moving to the state from New York.

"Today's announcement only reaffirms one thing. Connecticut is still the insurance capitol of the United States," said Gov. Malloy.

Today the CEO of an international insurance company came to Hartford to announce he was moving his headquarters from Westchester to Stamford.

The Navigators Group will immediately bring 100 high paying jobs to an exisiting Stamford office building, with 100 more to be added. A 25 million dollar project leveraged by an 8 million dollar state loan.

"We knew we were dealing with the real deal, people who were interested in job growth and who were pro business and actively engaged in their own efforts in bringing jobs to the state of Connecticut," said President and CEO Stanley Galanski.

But the Governor looked very happy today for another reason.

Many, many more Connecticut residents are employed than has been previously reported. In fact revised numbers from the State Labor Department show that the unemployment rate is closer to 8 percent than 9.
 
The Governor pointed out that his adminstration had said the numbers were wrong all along.

"There have been a whole lot of headlines about how we wern't creating jobs over the last year. We knew we were, we knew what was happening. It takes a while to get those numbers factored in," said Gov. Malloy.

The adminstation was nearly gloating today that more jobs have been created in the state than in any two year period since 1998.

"That's a two year number of private sector job growth in excess of 22-thousand jobs. Let's just put it in perspective. That's almost a thousand jobs a month being created in Connecticut over the last two years," said Gov. Malloy.

The adminstration also noted that housing numbers are also getting better.

The economist for the state's largest business organization noted that this is improvement but we still only recovered 43 percent of the jobs lost since the recession began.