PROVIDENCE – The Rhode Island economy continued to expand in September, marking six consecutive months of growth, according to data released by University of Rhode Island economist Leonard Lardaro on Monday.
The Rhode Island current conditions index had a value of 83 in September, an improvement from a value of 17 a year ago. The state CCI figure for August was upwardly revised to a value of 75.
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A CCI value above 50 indicates expansion, while a value below 50 indicates contraction.
Ten of 12 indicators that comprise the index improved year over year.
Lardaro noted in his report that while he believes that Rhode Island is recovering, much of the economic data available has a significant amount of “noise,” including “ridiculous jumps” in the state’s labor force and employment figures and massive jobless benefit fraud that occurred one year ago.
Of the state’s employment and labor force figures, Lardaro said, “In all my time analyzing Rhode Island’s economy, I have never seen a divergence between these two measures anywhere near what the current data appear to show.”
Of the individual indicator performances, Lardaro said that retail sales were Rhode Island’s star performer in September, rising 15.8% year over year.
“While we continue to see an uneven recovery, based on available data, we have no idea how uneven it actually is,” Lardaro said. “The changes in economic indicators are a mix of adverse pandemic effects being offset by a great deal of the impact of reopening parts of our state’s economy and don’t forget monetary and fiscal policy.”
Lardaro said that despite the recent economic recovery indicated by the CCI, he expects it will be “two to three years before we return to ‘normal,’ even with the ‘sugar high’ from all the federal money, since this will prevent our elected officials from making the structural improvements we need.”
Year over year CCI indicator performance changes:
- Government employment increased 5.8%
- U.S. consumer sentiment declined 9.4%
- Single-unit permits declined 9.2%
- Retail sales rose 15.8%
- Employment services jobs rose 1%
- Private services production employment rose 2.5%
- Total manufacturing hours rose 11.6%
- The state’s manufacturing wage rose 9.6%
- The state labor force grew 3.5%
- Benefit exhaustions declined 92.6%
- New claims declined 59.7%
- The state’s unemployment rate declined 5.7 percentage points
Rhode Island’s month-to-month CCI value was 58, indicating expansion from August, with 7 of 12 indicators improving, including government employment, retail sales, employment services jobs, the manufacturing wage, the labor force, the unemployment rate and benefit exhaustions.
