Hartford Business Journal

6 HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | AUGUST 25, 2025 POLITICS & POLICY www.borghesibuilding.com 2155 East Main Street Torrington, Connecticut 06790 860.482.7613 Check out our new website! Building Ideas That Work... Building Ideas That Work... © 2011 BlueScope Buildings North America, Inc. All rights reserved. Butler Manufacturing ™ is a division of BlueScope Buildings North America, Inc. Towns have relied on Borghesi Building & Engineering Co., Inc. for help to marry the budget with design and technology. e result is an efficient, practical building that "works". PUBLIC WORKS | WATERFORD HIGHWAY GARAGE | BARKHAMSTED TOWN GARAGE | HARWINTON Lanza agrees, saying anyone who suggests there might be a conspiracy to alter labor numbers doesn't under- stand the difficulty involved. "When you've got thousands of trained professional researchers working for the Labor Department and crunching numbers, using well-estab- lished, well-respected models of data collection and analysis, it is really hard to cook those numbers," he said. Patriotic duty The question, then, is whether there is a way to improve the reports and the process that produces them. Antoni's suggestion to end the monthly reports and issue quarterly ones instead won't solve the problem, Lanza said. "I think there would always be some effort to fill that void," he said. "Even if the Labor Department were to delay its reporting of this information, private groups and individuals are going to take that limited information, and they're going to make their own projections. … So, I'm not sure it would make a really huge difference." Lanza added there is another down- side to altering the labor report, because the lack of updated information could make other countries and outside inves- tors "more suspicious and anxious" about investing in the U.S. economy. "That would be to our long-term detriment," he said. Both he and Flaherty say that, at least for the moment, there isn't an obvious better way to collect the data. "I think you're always going to end up with basically some kind of poll, some kind of survey, all limited information you're always going to have, and that's the problem," Lanza said. "It's just the nature of the beast." Flaherty said it could take years to change the process because all 50 states are involved. "The beauty of the program is it is a state-federal partnership," he said. "But getting all of those entities … to move is difficult." Still, changes do happen, he said. "There are processes we're always trying to improve," Flaherty said. "We have committees and work groups and all sorts of communication between our counterparts and our federal part- ners all the time to try to make improve- ments in data collection, data quality, and the modeling procedures." Ultimately, though, in Flaherty's opinion the simple answer is to do whatever is necessary to get businesses to provide more timely information. He understands that businesses may see filling out the survey as just "one more government form," but it's more than that, he added. "I'm hoping that we can get the message out that it's not that you're doing paperwork for the Labor Department," Flaherty said. "You're doing paperwork that's going to help the entire public understand what's happening in our economy, … and it really is our goal, our only goal, our only purpose, to try to provide accurate information about what's happening in the economy." CT JOBS REPORT REVISIONS JOBS ADDED OR LOST TOTAL DIFFERENCE IN MONTH (PRELIMINARY EST.) REVISED JOBS ADDED OR LOST JUNE 2025 6,300 6,100 -200 MAY 2025 -6,500 -4,200 2,300 APRIL 2025 6,900 4,800 -2,100 MARCH 2025 -4,500 -4,100 400 FEBRUARY 2025 -1,200 -1,700 -500 JANUARY 2025 2,300 1,500 -800 DECEMBER 2024 5,100 3,500 -1,600 NOVEMBER 2024 300 1,800 1,500 OCTOBER 2024 -300 -300 0 SEPTEMBER 2024 -300 -1,300 -1,000 AUGUST 2024 -2,200 -2,200 0 JULY 2024 700 -900 -1,600 JUNE 2024 3,300 3,300 0 MAY 2024 4,700 4,100 -600 APRIL 2024 1,100 1,600 500 MARCH 2024 4,900 500 -4,400 FEBRUARY 2024 900 2,600 1,700 JANUARY 2024 7,400 5,800 -1,600 Source: HBJ research of CT DOL data

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