Economic slowdown: Is it just the weather?

HARTFORD, Conn. – If the housing market continues to slow and interest rates rise, a state economist predicts job growth in Connecticut will slow this year and in 2015.

The state departments of Labor and Economic and Community Development said in a report Monday that the state added 19,000 jobs between the end of 2009 and late 2011. That accelerated to nearly 31,000 between late 2011 and the end of 2013. But the forecast says job growth will slow to fewer than 20,000 new jobs from the end of 2013 to late 2015.

“Given the pick-up in U.S. job growth in April, the U.S. economy may very well bounce back in the second quarter from the harsh winter,” Daniel Kennedy, a senior economist, wrote in the monthly report.

But looking at Unemployment Insurance tax data, there’s also the chance that growth will return to a slower pace in the third and fourth quarters, “tempering growth for 2014.”

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