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Where the Jobs Are
Transportation, communications pacing job growth in state
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Business New Haven
8/21/2000
By: BNH
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Fueled by advances in technology as well as changes in demographics and economic patterns, the transportation and communications industries have become leaders in employment gains in Connecticut.
According to the August edition of the Connecticut Economic Digest, jointly published by the state's Department of Labor (DOL) and Department of Economic & Community Development, regional efforts to ease highway congestion and expand air travel at Bradley International Airport have driven up employment levels in transportation industries statewide.The local, suburban and interurban highway passenger group added 3,655 jobs between 1992 and '99 - a 37.5-percent hike. Over the same period, air-transportation industries more than doubled job levels, adding 5,071 workers.
That growth is attributed in part to the entrance of Southwest Airlines and small passenger and courier services that drove down Bradley fares and increased traffic at the Windsor Locks facility.
Along with employment growth, Connecticut's transportation industries have seen concomitant hikes in wages as well. Water transportation not only had the highest wage growth (up 38 percent) over the seven-year comparison period, but also the highest average annual wage ($49,673) among related industries.
Wages in transportation services ranked second, at $46,462, and represented a growth rate of 23.6 percent over the period.
The biggest transportation loser was motor freight and warehousing, which lost nearly 2,300 jobs in seven years. Even here, however, wages still rose by 17.7 percent.
Rapid technological advances have fueled not only explosive growth in communications services but industry employment as well. In 1990, according to the Connecticut Economic Digest, the world had 11 million mobile telephone users; by the end of 1998 that figure was 400 million.
Overall communications-sector employment in Connecticut grew 15.3 percent between 1992 and 1999, a net gain of 2,545 jobs. Cable and other pay-television services was a driving force for job growth, adding 2,008 jobs by 1999, with attendant wage growth of 64.9 percent.
Communications services (SIC code 489), encompassing facilities such as satellite earth stations, added 173 jobs and pays on average the highest annual wage ($84,626) of all the communications industries.
Also, between 1992 and '99 in Connecticut, communications industries gained 106 new companies - the largest employer growth among all transportation and public-utilities industries in the state.
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