CT Lags The Nation In Post-Pandemic Personal Income Recovery

CONNECTICUT — The personal income growth of Americans began to bounce back in the first quarter of 2021, but that bounce is barely a bump in Connecticut.

Those were the findings of the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, a division of the Commerce Department, in a report released Tuesday.

The change in personal income, compared to Q1 of 2020, ranged from 89.3 percent in Mississippi to 31.1 percent in the District of Columbia. Income change among Nutmeg State residents fell into the shallow end of the pool, recording a mere a 42 percent uptick. Nearby states New York (51.9 percent), Massachusetts (44.7 percent), Rhode Island (64.9 percent), Vermont (68.5 percent), New Hampshire (52.9 percent), New Jersey (49.5 percent) and Maine (74.7 percent) all performed better than Connecticut.

Personal income was goosed along significantly by government assistance in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The BEA calculated that government aid — what it calls "transfer receipts" — increased $2.3 trillion for the nation in the first quarter of 2021, accounting for almost all the growth in personal income. The increase in transfer receipts reflected new federal pandemic relief payments provided by the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act and the American Rescue Plan Act.

State unemployment insurance compensation was boosted by a temporary $300 increase in weekly benefits provided by the ARPA. The increase in all other transfer receipts reflected the $600 payments made to American provided by the CRRSA Act and the $1,400 economic impact payments provided by ARPA. Transfer receipts increased in every state and the District of Columbia, ranging from $251.9 billion in California to $3.8 billion in the District of Columbia.

For the nation, earnings increased 6.1 percent in the first quarter of 2021 after increasing 11.5 percent in the fourth quarter. The increase in earnings reflected the continued economic recovery following the partial economic shutdown that began in the first quarter of 2020 after the start of the pandemic, according to BEA analysts.