Rhode Island once had the highest unemployment rate in the nation. Some fear Trump policies could bring new woes.

Boston Globe

24-04-2025

Advertisement
'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
Get Rhode Map
A weekday briefing from veteran Rhode Island reporters, focused on the things that matter most in the Ocean State.
Enter Email
Sign Up
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.
Advertisement
'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.
Advertisement
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.
Advertisement
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.
Advertisement
'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