RI loses more jobs, DLT says it may take years to recover

Posted: 8/17/2012 9:10:50 AM

Unemployment numbers for the state of Rhode Island inched down for the third month in a row but the state continues to shed jobs.

“It is the third consecutive month where we have gone down which is obviously some good news, the rate is still very high however, still one of the higher states, but the trend is down, we have not been this low since May of 2009 so that’s some good news we also have the number of unemployed residents down as well,” said Charlie Fogarty, Director of the Department of Labor and Training. “On the negative side however the number of Rhode Island based jobs based on this survey is down and obviously that is a concern because we need to have the jobs out there if people are going to get back into the employment field.”

According to July’s unemployment numbers, unemployment is down a tenth of a percent from June’s 10.9% to 10.8%. This is a significant drop from July 2011 when unemployment was 11.4%.

In the past month the state shed over 1,000 jobs with significant loses in the Health Care & Social Assistance industry. Fogarty said the job losses in Rhode Island since the beginning of the recession have been significant and it will take the state a while to recover. “We have lost almost 40,000 jobs since this recession began and that’s the biggest job loss since back in the early 70’s when we had the navy pull out and it took us eight year to get out of that situation, to get back to those numbers, so it is going to be a while.”

Rhode Island has over 7,000 less jobs than it had 1 year ago.