A week before Ella T. Grasso Technical High School graduated 110 seniors Thursday night, nearly 30 of them took part in a “signing day” event at the school, a celebration of their already having accepted jobs at Electric Boat.

One by one, called up on stage, they donned hard hats and posed for pictures.

Throughout the region, some 50 graduating seniors have taken jobs at EB, which plans to hire around 2,000 people at its Groton and New London facilities in 2022, according to Dan McFadden, the company’s director of communications and public affairs.

And the shipbuilder’s not the only source of good news in the region’s labor market.

On Thursday, the state Department of Labor’s monthly jobs report showed the Norwich-New London-Westerly area had added an estimated 500 jobs in May, the biggest one-month gain recorded in any of Connecticut’s six major Labor Market Areas. The Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk area added 200 jobs while each of the four other LMAs lost jobs.

State Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, hailed eastern Connecticut’s employment outlook, noting in a press release that the Norwich-New London area also had posted the strongest seasonally adjusted job growth of any area on a year-over-year basis, adding 3,500 jobs since May 2021, an increase of 3%.

“Help wanted signs are out all over eastern Connecticut, and people are responding, getting jobs and starting careers that help pay the bills and plan for the future," Osten said. “Just last week I was at an event with Electric Boat at Ella Grasso Technical School as they welcomed a large group of students who are going to work at EB right out of high school."

"Our school-to-work pipeline is paying off, the construction and manufacturing and leisure and hospitality sectors have rebounded over the past year, and I know there are more jobs to be had,” Osten said.

Statewide, seasonally adjusted nonfarm jobs increased by 1,600 in May, pushing the unemployment rate in Connecticut down two-tenths of a percentage point to 4.2%. April’s previously reported gain of 1,600 jobs was revised downward to 1,400.

The U.S. unemployment rate is 3.6%.

“May showed solid job growth,” Patrick Flaherty, director of the state labor department’s Office of Research, said in a statement. “The private sector has added more than 15,000 jobs so far in 2022 and the unemployment rate has fallen in 10 of the last 11 months.”

Connecticut has now recovered 238,900, or 82.6% of the 289,400 nonfarm positions it lost due to the COVID-19 breakout in March-April 2020, the labor department said.

Fred Carstensen, professor of finance and economics and director of the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis at the University of Connecticut, was critical of the state labor department’s report.

“Not only has Connecticut not recovered from the COVID-19 shutdowns, it has not recovered in payroll employment from 2008,” he said in a statement Thursday.

Carstensen said the jobs report “systematically fails” to mention the state’s peak employment level in March 2008 before the Great Recession, which he said is the most relevant metric in judging the labor market’s health. Current employment levels are below where they were in 1989, he said.

“Everyone should know we haven't recovered to our previous peak, and aren't even back to where we were more than 30 years ago,” Carstensen said. “It is a major ongoing crisis for the state.”

According to the jobs report, private sector employment in the state grew by 2,900 jobs in May while the government sector, which includes tribal casino employment, lost 1,300 jobs. Seven of 10 industry sectors increased, including professional and business services; education and health services; information; other services; and leisure and hospitality.

In addition to government, the construction and mining and manufacturing sectors lost jobs.

b.hallenbeck@theday.com