Governor Raimondo’s Jobs Legacy Is Unravelling
Monday, September 21, 2020
Governor Gina Raimondo has said hundreds of times in speeches, news interviews, and even her inaugural address that when she came to office, Rhode Island had one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. In January 2015, when Raimondo was first sworn in as Governor, the unemployment rate was 6.5%.
In her second Inaugural address in 2019, Raimondo said, “Four years ago, I stood here before you and we faced a very different Rhode Island than we do today. The foundation of our economy had eroded. Our unemployment rate was among the highest in the nation. Our roads, bridges and schools were crumbling, and we didn't even have a plan to fix them. We felt vulnerable as we saw the people we love lose their jobs and homes and struggle to make ends meet.”
The coronavirus might be crippling the entire country, but the latest statistics from the U.S. Department Labor released Friday show that Rhode Island’s job situation is now the second-worst in America — 12.5% — nearly twice the rate as to when Raimondo came to office.
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Failure to Diversify RI's Economy
The same vulnerabilities that crippled the Rhode Island economy in the Great Recession are pounding the state again.
Raimondo’s five-plus years of job growth has been obliterated in six months.
Raimondo refused repeated requests to respond to questions from GoLocal for this article and her press office offered Scott Jensen of the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training to respond.
Leonard Lardaro, an economist at the University of Rhode Island, is not shy about defining the state's cyclical economic problems.
“Do you remember that Rhode Island had the highest unemployment rate for quite a long stretch during the Great Recession? Is the current situation a coincidence? Sadly, no,” said Lardaro.
“Remember, Rhode Island was already slowing prior to COVID, [when] I gave a better than 50% chance of recession here by year-end,” added Lardaro.
RI Going in Wrong Direction
On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics new data unveiled that while many states' job situations have improved, Rhode Island is going in the wrong direction, reporting among the worst numbers in America.
In total, 29 states had jobless rates lower than the U.S. figure of 8.4 percent, 10 states had higher rates, and 11 states and the District of Columbia had rates that were not appreciably different from that of the nation. But Rhode Island's rate increased by 1.5%.
"Rhode Island numbers are bucking the national trend. Between July and August 2020, 41 states saw their unemployment rates drop, and the nation’s unemployment rate declined by 1.8% to 8.4%. Massachusetts unemployment declined by 4.9% to 11.3%," said Gary Sasse, head of the Hassenfeld Institute at Bryant University told GoLocal Friday.
New England Unemployment Rates - Best to Worst:
Vermont: 4.8%
New Hampshire: 6.5%
Maine: 6.9%
Connecticut: 8.1%
Massachusetts: 11.3%
Rhode Island: 12.8%
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