Connecticut Planning Regions Replace Counties in JobsEQ

This update marks the transition from Connecticut’s former counties to planning regions, the state’s new county-equivalent entities.

As of the 2024Q1 release of the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), Connecticut’s eight counties have been replaced in JobsEQ by nine Councils of Government, which are also referred to as planning regions. Since the 1960s, the State of Connecticut has utilized alternatives to traditional counties and, in 2015, the state implemented these nine county-equivalent planning regions.¹ As of 2022, these planning regions were recognized and adopted by the U.S. Census Bureau as official county-equivalents.² With the 2024Q1 QCEW release, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) began utilizing these planning regions to report data for Connecticut.³ To reflect this change, JobsEQ updated data from Connecticut counties to Connecticut planning regions, including historical employment data.

The boundaries of the former eight Connecticut counties are shown in Figure 1, while Figure 2 displays the nine new planning regions, as defined by the State of Connecticut Department of Labor.⁵ The BLS did not map employment data from the old counties to the new planning regions, creating a break in Connecticut QCEW data between the fourth quarter of 2023 and the first quarter of 2024.³ To remedy this discontinuity in the time series, Chmura modeled Connecticut employment and wage data in JobsEQ throughout history (back to 2001) to reflect the new planning regions. Along with this transition to Connecticut planning regions comes an update to other Connecticut-based statistical areas, including metropolitan statistical area (MSA) and combined statistical area (CSA) definitions.³ Figure 3 lists the new region codes and titles for these planning regions, along with their MSA and CSA assignments, all of which are now usable in JobsEQ.⁶ Any Connecticut-based user-defined custom regions created in JobsEQ before this update will need to be recompiled from the Custom Region page.

Figure 3. QCEW County-MSA-CSA Crosswalk, 2024 – Current⁶

¹ State of Connecticut. Office of Policy and Management. 2014 Redesignation of Planning Regions. Accessed November 2024. https://portal.ct.gov/opm/igpp/org/planning-regions/2014-redesignation-of-planning-regions

² State of Connecticut. Office of Policy and Management. Regional Councils of Governments in Connecticut. Accessed November 2024. https://portal.ct.gov/opm/igpp/org/planning-regions/planning-regions---overview

³ Bureau of Labor Statistics. Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages. New 2024 Connecticut Counties. Modified August 2024. Accessed November 2024. https://www.bls.gov/cew/classifications/areas/new-2024-connecticut-counties.htm 

⁴ Connecticut Labor. State of Connecticut Towns Listed by County. Updated March 2015. Accessed November 2024. https://www1.ctdol.state.ct.us/lmi/misc/counties.asp 

⁵ Connecticut Labor. State of Connecticut Towns Listed by Regional Councils of Government (RCOGs). Updated June 2020. Accessed November 2024. https://www1.ctdol.state.ct.us/lmi/misc/rcogtowns.asp 

⁶ Bureau of Labor Statistics. Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages. QCEW County-MSA-CSA Crosswalk (For NAICS-Based Data). Modified August 2024. Accessed November 2024. https://www.bls.gov/cew/classifications/areas/county-msa-csa-crosswalk.htm