Chart: Less than 60% in RI have a job for the third straight year
March 1st, 2013 at 4:36 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
There was understandable relief Thursday following the announcement that Rhode Island’s unemployment rate has fallen below 10% for the first time in nearly four years. But it’s not the full picture.
On Friday, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released another statistic about Rhode Island’s job market: the employment-population ratio, which measures how many people have a job out of all the state’s residents ages 16 and up who aren’t in the military or behind bars. The news wasn’t good.
Rhode Island’s employment-population ratio in 2012 was 59.4%, basically unchanged from 2011 – when it dropped to a new low. As recently as 2006, when employment peaked in Rhode Island, the employment-population ratio was 65%. Here’s a chart showing what’s happened:
Long-term unemployment can do long-term damage to those who are out of work for an extended period of time, so it’s unclear how long it will take for Rhode Island’s employment-population ratio to recover to its 2006 level (assuming it does eventually).
This helps demonstrate why experts caution against looking solely at the unemployment rate – it can fall because people give up on looking for work or drop out of the labor force for other reasons, which aren’t signs of healthy job growth. As for the jobless rate? Rhode Island’s 9.9% was the nation’s highest in December.
• Related: How high unemployment changed where Rhode Islanders work (March 1)
Tags: economy, employment, employment-population ratio, jobs, population, unemployment
Nesi's Notes covers politics and the economy in and around Rhode Island for WPRI.com. (Twitter: 
The analysis of these jobless numbers should include something about how sequestration will effect Rhode Island is the months ahead. The state has a fairly large number of defense contractors, especially Newport County and at Quonset Point. Most of them have already begun their layoffs. These are among the best-paying jobs in the state, so there will be some trickle-down effect. I suspect the dip in the unemployment rate is a temporary thing, and it will soon be inching up again.
I could create at least a new jobs tomorrow in this state AND start a new revenue stream.
Remember the floods a few years ago with all the rain we had? Our rivers and streams in this state are filled with debris and fallen trees’s that divert water to places where it should not be going. Water follows the path of least resistance. If we opened up these waterways, it would create a whole new attraction here for fresh water canoers and kayakers and fisherman. It would help to keep the water flowing in its banks where it belongs. DEM can’t do it they are barely staffed and running as it is. Forestry would just laugh at you for the idea. We need to use what we have here to create revenue, not try to re-invent the wheel
What we really need is to create a friendly environment to attract businesses to our state. This starts by getting rid of burdensome rules and regulations, and easing the tax burden. How about starting with the alternative minimum tax that hurts small businesses. We are ranked 50th for business and number one for unemployment because our legislators at the Statehouse continue to focus on everything else.
Do you really think any of that is going to happen? So long as the legislators and their union buddies get their own pocket lined their only concern is how to tax the money out of the rest of us. I’ll bet I can grow wings before this sewer becomes business friendly. The democrats have been flushing this state down the toilet for the last 50 years and most Rhode Islanders are just too stupid to do anything other than vote for that nice guy who get their mom/dad/sister/brother/cousin a nice job with the state or city. They just don’t seem to be able to connect the dots between that and the sky high taxes we pay for a deterioriated infrastructure and crappy public services.
RI has closer to 100,000 people out of work.The Missing Linc says everything is fine and getting better.But this is a Governor who spent a lot of time protecting a killer.This is also a Governor who was dismissive of a rape victim by saying that could have happened anywhere.This is also a Governor who wrote an op-ed article in the Providence Journal celebrating Roe V Wade.Anybody who celebrates the killing of innocent children needs professional help.Linc is going to bring jobs I doubt that one.As long as Linc,Fox,Paiva Weed have power this state will be stuck in the abyss.
If there was a program in place similar to the CCC – instead of giving people unemployment checks to apply for jobs that don’t simply don’t exist until the funds run out – they would have the opportunity to do public works projects and stay active. The blizzard trashed the State and Sandy messed up the beaches. There is plenty to do that would benefit everyone and make Rhode Island a more attractive destination.
Ted Nesi – Since RI population continues to decrease because there are no employment opportunities for people who were *able* to relocate, would that mean if they had stayed that the percentage of the population without jobs would have increased even more? With another 25 or 30K unemployed, what would have been the effective rate? Also, does this chart include part-time and full-time employment?
All good questions – you’re on the right track with your thinking. I’ll have more on this later in the week, stay tuned.
Rhode Island is the third world of the United States.
I’ll more appropriately restate my comment here. The public, I suspect, is being ‘played’ with a manipulated illegitimate unemployment rate that allows the government to not include the longer term unemployed as well as allow the gov to determine who belongs to that excluded category. Folks unemployed & underemployed since 2008 are not being represented as the more accurate (U6) rate is more like 17.6% (2nd worst in country) while before 2008 is was ~8.3%. RI, a great place to live is looking more and more not like a great place to work.
Every Rhode Islander should read the book “The Shadow Bosses.” It explains how government (state and local) unions control America and rob taxpayers blind. Until we elect state legislators who are not relying on union clout to get elected, nothing will change in Rhode Island. Public employee union bosses have one goal above all others–convert more state and municipal workers to dues paying union members. They use these dues to get politicians elected who will favor their union. And we the taxpayers pay the price for costly, ineffective government. In RI public safety workers (police and firefighters) have binding arbitration rights. So city mayors can not decide how much these workers make; arbitrators make these decisions. So we have the second (2nd) highest fire safety per capita cost in the country. Our K-12 teachers have the eleventh (11th) highest average salaries in the country per the NEA’s own research study–”Rankings & Estimates.” And now the legislators in the House Labor Committee want to give them binding arbitration rights. If teachers get these rights, we’ll have even more expensive education costs that will bankrupt every city in the state. See what Coleman Young, the mayor of Detroit, has to say about mandatory binding arbitration rights and what these laws did for Michigan!
[...] rate: the percentage of the state’s residents who are employed has flatlined, with no real improvement since dropping below 60% during the recession. As of June 2012 one in three Rhode Islanders [...]