PROVIDENCE – One month after slowing down, an economic index for the Ocean State ticked up in August, according to PBN and e-forecasting.com, the co-producers of the Rhode Island Leading Economic Indicator Index.
The LEI increased 0.26 percent in August, a gain on the revised 0.24 percent increase in July, but still less than the 0.41 percent bump experienced in June. The August gain puts the indicator at 133.3 for the month, with a reading of 100 equal to the state’s economic output in 2000.
The index is a predicter of the direction of Rhode Island’s economy based on readings of nine economic metrics: building permits, consumer expectations (regionally), exports of manufactured goods, interest rate spread, orders index (nationally), state employment barometer, stock prices (nationally), unemployment claims and weekly hours in manufacturing. Contributing the largest positive amount to the index were the interest rate spread and unemployment claims, while the largest drag on the index was consumer expectations.
Seen in a longer-term context, the six-month growth rate for the index was 2.3 percent in August, a 0.1 percentage point increase on July’s rate. In both cases, the leading index sits above the annual growth rate of the Rhode Island economy of 1.8 percent, meaning the state’s economic health is improving, if ever so slowly.
