Without saying “I told you so,” Gov. Dannel P. Malloy beamed Friday as he basked in the good news brought by a labor report that showed the state actually gained jobs in 2012 after the revised labor numbers were released.

“I told you up front about how we were creating jobs,” Malloy said in the lobby of the state Insurance Department. “There have been a whole lot of headlines about how we weren’t creating jobs over the last year. We knew we were.”

He said the state created 22,000 over the last two years, which is about 1,000 jobs a month.

This past summer, the Department of Labor was scratching its head trying to figure out why the unemployment numbers were on the rise at the same time unemployment claims were down.

“We’re actually doing a pretty good job of job growth,” Malloy said at a press conference announcing that a specialty insurance group was moving its headquarters and 200 jobs to Stamford.

The Navigators Group, currently headquartered in Rye Brook, N.Y., will move to Stamford by the fourth quarter of 2013.

The state Department of Economic and Community development will give the company an $8 million forgivable loan at no interest, as well as a $3.5 million training grant. The company will become the 10th to receive a forgivable loan for promising to create 200 jobs. The first 100 employees will be moved from its current location in New York.

“There are a lot of states that claim to be pro-business,” Stanley Galanski, president and CEO of Navigators Group, said at a press conference Friday. “A lot of them take out advertisements on TV and the media, but that’s one thing. When we sat down with the governor, with Insurance Commissioner Thomas Leonardi, and Commissioner Catherine Smith, we knew we were dealing with the real deal.”

He said he knew his company wanted to be part of what ‘this group was building here.”

The negotiations with the state started more than a year ago and the reason they wanted to move to Connecticut was the “intellectual capital.”

He said it was important to be in a state with talented people and other companies in the area that are a “natural fit for our business.”

The company has revenues of about $1.2 billion a year.

Galansky, who already is a Connecticut resident, said the move wouldn’t shorten his commute.

“But let me say that it may not lessen his commute, but a drive to Stamford any day is a good drive,” Malloy said.