PROVIDENCE – The Rhode Island economy is currently in its worst shape in more than four decades, and the state’s unemployment rate will not peak for almost another year, state lawmakers were told last week.

Rhode Island’s unemployment rate is expected to peak at 14 percent between July and September 2010, Edinaldo Tebaldi, an economics professor at Bryant University, said in a presentation to members of the General Assembly. The rate was 13 percent in September 2009.

The state has lost about 37,000 jobs since employment began to decline in February 2007 and is likely to lose an additional 9,000 jobs by the middle of next year, Tebaldi said. He based his presentation on the latest forecast by the nonprofit New England Economic Partnership (NEEP), which advises states on the region’s economic outlook.

NEEP’s previous forecasts have turned out to be too optimistic. In May, the group said the unemployment rate in Rhode Island would peak the following spring at 10.9 percent. The day after the forecast was released, new figures showed Rhode Island’s jobless rate had already reached 11.1 percent.

NEEP economists will discuss their revised forecasts next week at their semiannual gathering at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

Tebaldi offered lawmakers a string of depressing statistics in his presentation. Rhode Island was the only New England state that lost population from 2003 to 2008, with a decline of 2 percent, and the state’s 0.86 percent economic growth rate during the five-year period was the region’s weakest.

He also noted that “the state’s failure to create new jobs is not a new problem.” Rhode Island’s share of U.S. nonfarm employment has fallen from about 0.45 percent in the early 1980s to 0.35 percent today – a 22 percent decline – and NEEP expects the share to fall further by 2013.

Manufacturing employment, a traditional provider of jobs in Rhode Island, has been falling in the state and nationally since 1980. Job creation has also been stagnant in the trade, transportation and utilities sector.

By contrast, employment in education and health services, and leisure and hospitality have been rising. But Rhode Island’s job growth in those sectors has lagged the nation’s, Tebaldi said.

Citing rankings compiled by various organizations including The Tax Foundation and Forbes magazine, Tebaldi argued that Rhode Island has “failed to provide the right regulatory system” and other incentives to spur job growth in recent decades.

Tebaldi did offer a few positive notes. Falling home prices have made houses in Rhode Island the most affordable they have been since 2001, as measured as a share of median income, although it has not reached the level of affordability recorded here in the mid- to late-1990s.

He also noted that Rhode Island has “a significant pool of well-qualified workers” and strengths in both science and technology that could help create jobs in the years ahead.