Study: RI won’t get back to pre-recession job count before 2018
June 5th, 2012 at 5:00 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
In Rhode Island, at least, it’s no exaggeration to call this the Great Recession.
Rhode Island won’t add enough jobs to regain its pre-recession employment level until sometime after 2017, more than five years from now, according to a new analysis by IHS Global Insight reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Only two other states – Michigan and Nevada – are facing a comparably long slog to recovery. Even then, the WSJ’s Phil Izzo notes, “getting back to where a state started doesn’t account for the jobs needed by new entrants to the labor force over the past four years.”
Employment in Rhode Island fell from 496,400 in December 2006 to 457,000 in November 2009, a drop of 39,400 or nearly 8%. The number has barely budged since then, with employment up by just 800 jobs as of April – still 38,600 away from the December 2006 peak.
The IHS forecast suggests Rhode Island’s job market will spend at least 11 years suffering from the recession and its aftermath.
• Related: Providence area won’t recover lost jobs for another 6 years (June 20)
(map: IHS Global Insight, via WSJ)
Tags: employment, IHS global insight, jobs, rhode island, unemployment
Nesi's Notes covers politics and the economy in and around Rhode Island for WPRI.com. (Twitter: 
I can’t find the data but I recall when I did the analysis to leave the state this was Q 3 2017 so its getting worse. The issue is not only that the US is undergoing a major slowdown, a combination of structural change in the employment force in a world where we must compete internationally AND a deleveraging recession, but that RI is stuck in the 50′s. In the new economy all states, as with all countries , will fight for jobs. RI’s cost structure is too high for all the reasons anyone intelligent enough to read this blog knows. What we tell to all the young people we worked with there is : MOVE. There is no future left, you need growth for housing prices to rise, for jobs for your kids, for school funding etc. RI=Greece.Except the taxpayers are paying and their money is siphoned….
The Democrats get full credit! They all need to go! Vote them all out and they can take their organized labor union cronies with them!
I agree with you that the voters need to vote them out of office. With that being said and done, you know the average RI voters will not vote out their relative or friend. Rhode Island is dead in the water. Rhode Island should change their name to Dogpatch.
I agree that the demoncrats get full credit for this mess, but I would expect to see Satan turning triple axles on an ice skating rink in hades before democrats get voted out of office in Rhode Island. Our bought and paid for demoncrat general assembly is here to stay.
Just a note about what the WSJ article comments on about the need for expanding employment to absorb new entrants into the labor force: Rhode Island’s population has now been contracting since July of 2004. We are the only state with that rather dubious distinction! So, the number of new entrants isn’t anywhere near as high as it would have been were RI adding to its population (and labor force).
Where do you get that, Len? The latest BLS data says RI’s civilian noninstitutional population grew from 838,032 in July 2004 to 844,790 in April 2012 – not much of an increase, but not a decrease either.
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I’m not usually writing a good job comment for Gov Chafee, but tonight he did something to earn an “atta boy”. The gov delivered a letter to legislature opposing the bill placing the East Bay Energy Consortium under the EDC.
This was a loser for taxpayers, anti business, and crony friendly.
He had two basic reasons. 1) the concern of the communities involved (THAT’S US) and 2) that it was to be a subsidiary of the EDC.
By 2018? Rhode Island has a better chance of being the first state to declare bankruptcy. Pathetic.