While the overall employment picture in the Ocean State has improved over the last year – the number of employed Rhode Islanders increased by 2,500 from March 2015 to March 2016, the unemployment rate fell to 5.4 percent from 6.3 percent, and the number of nonfarm jobs in the state increased 8,800 to 490,900 – it could be better.
For starters, the civilian labor force in the state, that is, people who are either employed or actively seeking employment, fell to 552,800 in March from 555,600 a year earlier. To put that in perspective, the civilian labor force in the United States increased to 159.3 million from 156.9 million over the same period, while the unemployment rate fell to 5 percent from 5.5 percent.
One factor in the decline in the labor force may be less-than-optimal demand from employers for workers. According to the R.I. Department of Labor and Training, citing Conference Board statistics, Rhode Island had the lowest rate of online advertised vacancies per 100 people in the labor force in New England in March – 2.96 – well below the national rate – 3.23. Worse yet, that rate fell from 3.88 in March 2015, a 23.7 percent drop. The national rate fell 3.6 percent. So while the overall economy seems to have slowed a little, Rhode Island was falling further behind.
Perhaps even more disturbing is how many unemployed people there are per advertised vacancy. In March in Rhode Island, there were 1.82 unemployed people per advertised job vacancy, an increase from March 2015, when there were 1.63 unemployed people per advertised job vacancy. This movement may support that argument from employers that they cannot find the right people for the jobs they have (and it might also explain some of the decline in the labor force, as people come to realize that they cannot get the jobs that are out there and so drop out of the labor force).
By contrast, in the United States, the number of unemployed people per advertised vacancy fell from 1.63 to 1.55, going in the opposite direction as the Ocean State, and supporting the argument that the American labor market is heating up … just not in Rhode Island. •
