Connecticut has now recovered more than half of the 269,200 jobs lost in April due to the coronavirus pandemic, with the state gaining 20,400 net nonfarm jobs in August, according to a report the Connecticut Department of Labor released Thursday.

August saw a slower recovery than the months prior: Connecticut gained 28,400 jobs in May, 77,300 in June, and 32,300 in July, though those figures are higher than the original estimates in each of the monthly jobs reports.

The education and health supersector saw the most new jobs in August, at 8,600, while leisure and hospitality followed with an increase of 4,200 jobs. But the leisure and hospitality sector has seen the greatest year-over-year decrease, with jobs down 22.9% compared to August 2019.

The government supersector, which includes tribal casino employment, increased by 1.7%, or 3,700 jobs. This was partly due to August being the biggest hiring month of 2020 for census-related employment.

Compared to August 2019, employment last month was down 6.8% nationwide and 7% in Connecticut. But it was down 11.7% in the Norwich-New London-Westerly labor market area, the greatest drop of any region in Connecticut.

This may be due to the impact of layoffs at Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun, and to the region's tourism economy.

The only sector to lose jobs in August was manufacturing, which lost 1,500 jobs, a 1% decrease.

Chris DiPentima, CEO of the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, sees two factors at play: the "continued slump in commercial aerospace demand," and Paycheck Protection Program loans running out.

"We are very concerned that Congress has failed to act on a new round of emergency relief funding," DiPentima said in a media advisory. "There's a lot of uncertainty ahead. The state's jobs recovery is a fragile one, with serious implications for our economy if we don't protect employers during this crucial time."

But Patrick Flaherty, acting director of the Office of Research at the Connecticut Department of Labor, said manufacturing companies often take time off in August.

Past Labor Situation reports from the department show that the manufacturing sector lost 200 jobs in August 2019 and 100 jobs in August 2018. But in August 2017, manufacturing jobs increased by 1,200, whereas seven of the other nine industry supersectors lost jobs that month.

"I'm not particularly concerned about that decline in manufacturing," Flaherty said of the August 2020 decrease. "I think it's a fact of how our statistics are put together that isn't fully capturing what is happening at the moment, where what is often a temporary shutdown has been reinterpreted as a decline, and I think that will come back in future months."

He said the department's process of seasonal adjustment is "not particularly helpful in this crisis," because seasonal adjustment is all about regular patterns and nothing about 2020 has been regular.

Similarly, Flaherty noted that the survey the Bureau of Labor Statistics conducts to determine states' unemployment rates uses the same questions year after year "because they want the data to be comparable over time," but that "doesn't necessarily adjust to this new reality."

The official August 2020 BLS unemployment rate for Connecticut is 8.1%, down from 10.2% in July. But the state Department of Labor estimates the actual rate for August is 14% to 15%.

When the pandemic began, the department let claimants know they didn't necessarily need to be looking for work to qualify for unemployment benefits. Flaherty said BLS counts people not looking for work as not being part of the labor force, but they should now be counted as unemployed.

The number of Connecticut residents the federal government counts as unemployed is less than the number of people claiming unemployment benefits in the state, Flaherty said, whereas the opposite is usually true.

e.moser@theday.com