Rhode Island once had the highest unemployment rate in the nation. Some fear Trump policies could bring new woes.
'It's been challenging,' Lupis said.
Lupis is job searching at a time when there are signs that Rhode Island's job market is starting to weaken amid policy changes in Washington that have
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hurt some businesses in the Ocean State. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate has been creeping up over the past few months and
Rhode Island tends to hurt deeper than other
states during times of recessions, said Leonard Lardaro, professor of economics at the University of Rhode Island.
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'When the national economy slows, Rhode Island goes down first. When it improves, we come out last,' he said.
During the great recession following the 2008 financial crisis,
.
'All these construction jobs suddenly went away,' Mary Burke, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, said. 'When the housing bust happens, boom, nobody wants to build a house anymore.'
Andrew Schiff, CEO of Rhode Island Community Food Bank, said as job losses began to mount, food operators reported in the summer of 2007 seeing increased numbers of people seeking help.
'It was devastating,' he said. 'There was just an overwhelming number of people coming for help and you really couldn't meet the need, you were helping a little bit but the need was so great.'
Some economists say it is unclear if a new economic downturn could hit as hard.
'We're going to have to wait and see. We could possibly go into recession even if the US economy doesn't. And that's the part that worries me and then coming out of it takes us longer,' Lardaro said.
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Edinaldo Tebaldi, a professor of economics at Bryant University, said the state's 4.8 percent jobless rate in March is close to the natural rate of unemployment in a normally functioning economy.
'This rate is not excessively high,' he said.
But that could change if President Trump's
'The consequence of this can be very severe here in Rhode Island, yet it's very hard to predict it at this point, given all the uncertainty that we have in both the U.S. as well as our trade partners' response,' Tibaldi said.
Schiff, of Rhode Island Community Food Bank,
said many
Rhode Islanders are concerned about the high cost of living beyond just food. People are not saving enough, particularly among low-income earners, and are going into debt.
'The other thing is people are very nervous about the cuts in federal funding that are being considered in Washington to programs like SNAP, because that was a savior last time,' he said.
The uncertainty in the economy could also lead to businesses pausing investment.
'If you don't know which direction the economy is going, you're probably not going to make any big decisions,' Burke said. 'You're not going to start hiring a lot of people.'
Matthew Weldon, director of the Rhode Island Department of Labor, said the uptick in the state's unemployment rate mirrored what
is happening in the region and the country as a whole, as
'There have been local and national stories about companies that have had layoffs. We've seen that over the last few months and that's contributed to the number of unemployed in Rhode Island, which has contributed to a slightly increased rate,' Weldon said.
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Brown University, one of the largest employers in Rhode Island, i
In March,
At the same time, national economic dynamics have the potential to contribute to the uptick in the jobless rate in the state, according to Weldon.
'When programming is cut, when funding is cut and layoffs result, that can certainly impact our unemployment rate, it can drive down our number of employed Rhode Islanders and Rhode Island based jobs,' he said.
Lupis, who has been looking for a job for a few months, received help with resume polishing, networking and interviewing skills from the nonprofit
'My goal is to find something by this summer,' he said. 'As time goes on, and the more financially challenging it is, that means I have to lessen my full goals of what I want to get.'
Brenda Clement, executive director at the nonprofit HousingWorks RI, said one legacy of the financial crisis is that
a mortgage,
residents may find it difficult to find affordable options.
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'I worry about what is going to happen in the long term if we start to see large scale slowdown of the economy and large scale layoffs and people losing jobs,' she said.
Lardaro, the economics professor, said Rhode Island has benefited from its proximity to Massachusetts and Connecticut as its neighbors, so job opportunities, though out-of-state, are not far away.
'That has helped to keep our unemployment rate lower than it would have been if we had to rely totally on in-state jobs,' he said.
Other analysts said Rhode Island's labor market has changed compared to when the great financial crisis hit.
'We have a deeper, a greater mix of business and industry and services, professional services. And I don't think there's any over-dependence, if you will, on any one particular industry,' said Laurie White, president of the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce.
Businesses are also better attuned to dealing with crises, having gone through the great recession, the pandemic and now the uncertainties of a changing economy, she said.
'People seem to be more out of the box, more resilient in finding solutions to get through it. So the mantra would be, you know, 'we have to get creative to figure out how to get though this,' as opposed to being paralyzed,' White said.
Omar Mohammed can be reached at
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'We are working very hard to make sure that we've got a process for determining the eligibility of people, making sure we hit the error rate that we need to as best we can, and we're working very hard every single day to effectuate that, but it's going to take money to do that,' Pritzker said Wednesday, noting to reporters at an unrelated news conference in Springfield that the new requirements do not come with funds for implementation. Efforts to lower the payment error rate can result in people being removed from the food assistance program, Rosen and other experts said — an outcome the state says it's trying to avoid. Still, starting in October, the state said it will be in a yearlong sprint to bring down the error rate measure ahead of cost-sharing measures that go into place after the year is up. If the rate comes down below 6% — from more than 11% currently — by fall 2026, then Illinois could avoid the more than $700 million burden, which would take effect starting in fall 2027. The state has said it can't cover that expected contribution, which is close to the looming transit fiscal cliff or the entire amount by which Illinois increased its operating revenue for the current fiscal year. To bring down the rate, IDHS is using an existing contract with Deloitte to diagnose exactly where those mistakes happen and what changes could be made to the program, according to the governor's office, which did not provide an estimated timeline on those efforts. IDHS is also reviewing its own policies to see how it could reduce the error rate, according to the state. Close to half of the payment errors in Illinois come from inaccurate wage and benefits data, including errors in what people report as their income, the state said. As a result, the governor's office said Illinois is exploring whether it could implement more stringent verifications in some areas, rather than relying on self-reporting, which is typically faster. But trying to bring down the error rate while also needing to implement new work requirements poses a major challenge, experts and the state said. 'If the application process is more stringent … it will be definitely a challenge,' said the Rev. Gary Gaston, CEO at Lessie Bates Davis Neighborhood House, a social services organization that Pritzker visited earlier this summer to highlight the challenges to SNAP. 'People have gotten acclimated to the current process. Any new processes that will be put in place could be challenging.' In the East St. Louis area where Gaston works, people might have difficulty finding work to meet the new requirements, and in some cases also face a lack of transportation options to make appointments, he said. On top of that, the area is already considered a food desert, with no major grocery store in the city — 'a double whammy,' he said. Demanding more information and verification up front can make it harder for people to access benefits, which is likely to result in some people losing benefits, Rosen at the Shriver Center said. The Pritzker administration, for its part, argues that the loss of benefits that could come from efforts to reduce the error rate is an intentional move by the Trump administration to reduce benefits and, in turn, lower the cost of the program to the federal government. Still, the state said it's working to reduce the rate in a way that keeps as many people as possible from losing benefits, as lowering the measure is the only way to avoid the massive potential $700 million bill. 'We want to make sure that we're actually delivering to the maximum number of people that need SNAP,' Pritzker told reporters Wednesday at the state fair, emphasizing that both underpayments and overpayments are considered errors. 'Republicans don't care that we're under-providing. They just want to cut everybody off of SNAP, and that is why they've set this SNAP error rate so low.' Haywood Talcove, CEO for government at LexisNexis Risk Solutions, said he wants to see Illinois and other states simplify their application process for benefits — in an effort to both reduce fraud and improve the experience for people who need benefits — from lengthy paperwork with many self-reported boxes to basic identification information and verification. Republicans have cited fraud and waste as reasons to crack down on parts of the benefits program, and Talcove, who is based in Washington, testified at a Republican-led congressional hearing this year about benefits fraud. If states are pouring millions into benefits and changes to the program, Talcove said, 'I'd like you to fix it, please.' The governor's office has noted that SNAP fraud is not the same as the error rate and that any fraud comes out of $4.7 billion in SNAP benefits that the state issues each year. Statewide, Illinois found about 0.07% of SNAP cases had an intentional program violation, which would have resulted in an IDHS penalty and potentially a court penalty, according to the governor's office. Additionally, there were more than 23,000 claims that benefits were stolen from recipients last year and an estimated $12.5 million in that type of fraud, according to a report from IDHS to the General Assembly. Rosen of the Shriver Center said the state should aim to get the information it needs, 'without being in a world where we make people bring so much stuff so often that they fall off the program.' 'Because inevitably somebody's kid gets sick, so they miss the appointment, and they can't take the three-hour bus ride to get to the office, the website doesn't work and they can't upload something. Those are not good reasons for people to be cut off who are eligible,' he said. In six years at the food bank and more than two decades working in social services, Montes said SNAP has felt 'stable, as far as the rules are concerned.' Now, even the work requirements by themselves are 'going to isolate many people from food, from accessing food, just that alone,' she said. 'Personally, it scares me.'
