Connecticut employers trimmed their payrolls by 1,600 jobs last month, but the state’s largest business group said the comparatively small figure should be cause for concern in Hartford.

The 0.1 percent decline in payrolls came after 11 months of growth, the state Department of Labor said, including a 2,900-worker gain in November that included poll workers and other Election Day jobs.

“As expected given action by the Federal Reserve, we saw Connecticut numbers moderate in December. In 2022, Connecticut added jobs faster than any year since 1996—this strong growth created a historically high number of jobs available in the state and, with low unemployment, employers continue to be challenged by a smaller workforce. U.S. Treasury economic priorities and inflation are among the issues that we’re watching going into 2023,” CTDOL Commissioner Danté Bartolomeo said in a statement.

The decline in the number of public and private employees comes despite the roughly 100,000 vacant jobs and fewer than 30,000 people filing for weekly unemployment benefits and a labor force participation rate 2 percent above the national average, CTDOL said.

These figures could spell a significant problem, the Connecticut Business and Industry Association said.

“The pace of Connecticut’s job growth is simply not meeting the demands of our economy,” CBIA president and CEO Chris DiPentima said in a statement. “At 2%, our 2022 job growth rate is one of the region’s slowest and trails the national rate by a full percentage point, while our pandemic recovery rate is 89%, well behind the U.S. at 106%. We have 102,000 job openings in the state—yet where are the workers? Our labor force has declined by 53,700 people since February 2020, more than one-third of the region’s losses. Even if every unemployed person was hired tomorrow, we’d still have over 21,000 unfilled positions.”

Part of the problem DiPentima suggested, was a mismatch between workers’ skills and those demanded by the state’s open positions. Better workforce training is needed, he said, along with enhanced efforts to attract new residents to Connecticut by making it more affordable. The CBIA is lobbying state legislators and the Lamont administration to cut taxes as part of that effort, and in his statement DiPentima said the group is also urging more housing production, student loan assistance, occupational licensing reform and federal immigration reform.