While Democrat Dannel Malloy says repeatedly in his campaign for governor that he created nearly 5,000 jobs during his 14 years as Stamford's mayor, state labor statistics show that Stamford lost thousands of jobs during Malloy's tenure.
Employment exploded during the late 1990s and peaked at an annual average of more than 83,000 jobs in the city in 2000, but Stamford has lost more than 13,000 jobs since then. That includes the loss of more than 5,000 jobs from June 2008 to June 2009, according to newly released state labor statistics. By June 2009, the city had less than 70,000 jobs - a drop of more than 13,000 from the peak and a drop of more than 5,000 jobs since June 1995.
But on the campaign trail and in his political literature, Malloy says he has the experience to do for Connecticut as he has already done in Stamford. The job creation is billed as a signature achievement, listed in campaign literature under Malloy's "record of results.''
"As mayor of Stamford for 14 years, Dan oversaw the city's transformation, creating nearly 5,000 new jobs and more affordable housing for residents,'' says a campaign flier.
Malloy was questioned about the 5,000 figure during his 2006 campaign for governor when New Haven Mayor John DeStefano's campaign charged that Malloy was misrepresenting his jobs record. Malloy then cited other statistics and never backed off his statements on 5,000 jobs.
Now, four years later, Malloy is using the same number again. But he said that he is not talking about net job gains during his tenure.
"We brought 5,000 new jobs to the city of Stamford, and actually, we probably brought substantially more than that,'' Malloy said during a meeting with The Courant's editorial board. "I rounded. Two employers, RBS and UBS, account for probably 90 percent of the 5,000. That wouldn't include all of the additional retail development. All of the other companies, such as Purdue Pharma, which we brought to Stamford. So, yeah. New jobs.''
Although they suffered from the huge Wall Street downturn in late 2008, Royal Bank of Scotland and Switzerland-based UBS are two of the marquee names that now dominate the Stamford skyline. They brought thousands of new jobs to the city.
When asked about the state Labor Department's statistics, Malloy said: "Those numbers have changed over a period of time. Wherever you want to draw the line, you can measure what the net numbers are in any given year. At times, it's been close to 5,000. At times, it hasn't been. By the way, those numbers don't include self-employed, so that actually throws the thing off a little bit. But what I want to be very specific in is that we attracted over 5,000 new jobs to the city of Stamford. That is jobs that did not previously exist in that city.''
But Malloy did not count the thousands of jobs that left the city during his 14-year tenure, including during the recent severe recession.
"They're not subtracted, nor are the self-employed [included],'' Malloy said.
UBS, a huge employer cited by Malloy and formerly known as Swiss Bank, agreed to move to Stamford after major tax credits were offered by the state in the early 1990s during more than two years of negotiations with then-Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. The 15-year, $165 million incentive package was approved by the state legislature in a special session Oct. 12, 1994 -- more than a year before Malloy became mayor. The construction of the huge headquarters north of the Stamford train station then began, and the workers moved in while Malloy was mayor.
In the complicated world of labor statistics, there are two ways to measure employment. First, there is the total number of jobs in Stamford -- regardless of whether the workers live in the city or commute in from the suburbs. Second, the unemployment rate is calculated by the percentage of jobs for residents who are currently living in Stamford. During Malloy's tenure, the unemployment rate increased from 4.6 percent in December 1995 to 7.3 percent in November 2009 -- rising and falling with the national economic cycles and increasing by more than 50 percent overall.
The recession that the state labor department says started in Connecticut in March 2008, costing the state more than 100,000 jobs, has also taken a huge toll on Stamford. The city lost more than 5,000 jobs between June 2008 and June 2009, according to Sal DiPillo, a labor statistics supervisor at the state Department of Labor.
The city gained more than 7,700 jobs between 1995 and 2000, but lost more than 13,000 between 2000 and June 2009, according to DiPillo. Malloy took office in December 1995.
After the average annual employment peaked in Stamford at 83,167 jobs in 2000, it dropped to 81,706 in 2001, 76,794 in 2002 and remained relatively steady in the 75,000 to 76,000 range all the way through 2007. The average annual employment dropped to 73,907 jobs in 2008 before dropping to 69,977 jobs in June 2009, according to a battery of statistics releaed by DiPillo, a veteran employee at the labor department.
On his 2010 campaign web site, Malloy writes, "During my tenure as Mayor, Stamford earned the distinction of being one of the few cities in the Northeast to grow jobs, and it bucked the trend in Connecticut.''
The statement was accompanied by a footnote that cited a three-page report on the letterhead of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston that was written by a policy analyst in October 2006 - long before the worst economic downturn in decades that swept jobs away from Stamford and many cities. The three-page memo never mentioned Stamford.