The One-Minute Geographer: Connecticut’s Surprising Economy

Aetna’s building in Hartford may be the country’s largest ‘colonial revival style’ building. Photo from ctmq.org.

This is the third post in a series on Connecticut.

Connecticut, like other highly urbanized and metropolitan states has most of its employment in white collar jobs, especially finance, insurance and real estate, followed by businesses and professional services. In fact, Connecticut ranks 2nd (to New York) in the proportion of its economy dependent on finance, insurance and real estate. Health care and education are big employers too.

The state, especially the Hartford area, has long been specialized in insurance. Although this specialization has decreased over time, Connecticut is still the leading state in number of workers per capita in the insurance field and it’s home to huge insurance corporations like The Hartford (now part of Prudential), Travelers, Cigna (formerly Connecticut General), and Mass Mutual.

Nassau Insurance (formerly Phoenix) and W. R. Berkley are also here. Insurance giant Aetna is in Hartford too and Aetna gave the city and the state a scare in 2017 when it announced that they were relocating their corporate headquarters to New York City. However, when CVS (headquartered in nearby-Providence) acquired Aetna a few months later, that decision was reversed and Aetna remained in Hartford. Like many other cities, though, many of Hartford’s core businesses have moved to the…