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Rhode Island Employment Snapshot, June 2015: RI Bucks Southern New England Trend?
[Click here for the printable one-page PDF of this post.]
The June employment data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) provides a good lesson in a number of the ways in which the data can be misleading. For one thing, looking at the unemployment rate, one could say that Rhode Island dipped below 6% for the first time since November 2007. Of course, one could have said the same thing last month. But the BLS revised May up to 6%, so the Ocean State gets to repeat its milestone.
As the first chart below shows, this has been a banner, booming year, for Rhode Island. More and more people are looking for work and, at least when it comes to the statistics, more and more people are finding it. The curious thing is that this growth has been unabated for so many months, yet the news and anecdotes around Rhode Island wouldn’t lead one to expect such a boom. Indeed, in June, the number of jobs available in Rhode Island, as measured by another BLS dataset, actually went down. Readers should keep in mind that two years in a row have brought dramatic downward revisions come the following January.
Another bit of conflicting information is related to the second chart. The fact that Massachusetts and Connecticut are doing so much better than Rhode Island, when it comes to making up for losses during the recession, is not new. What’s new is that Massachusetts and Connecticut slowed or lost ground in June, while Rhode Island’s sprint continues. That could be accurate, but it seems unlikely.
The third chart illustrates the significance of the size of the labor force. The red line shows what the curve would have been if the labor force had not shrunk since January 2007, and it ends in a conspicuous cliff. It also illustrates that Rhode Island has a long way to go, even according to the questionable statistics. In June, unemployment would still have been 8.5%. Even that represents a huge drop, over the course of this year so far, from 11.0% in December.
Making RhodeWorks Work for Rhode Islanders
[button url=”https://rifreedom.org/wp-content/uploads/ricfp-makingrhodeworkswork-071315.pdf” target=”https://rifreedom.org/wp-content/uploads/ricfp-makingrhodeworkswork-071315.pdf” size=”medium” style=”royalblue” ]Click for full “Making RhodeWorks Work” report[/button]
As an alternative option to fund repairs of the Ocean State’s crumbling bridge and road infrastructure, a “pay as you go” approach that prioritizes current general revenue in the budget would provide budget certainty and save over half a billion dollars in wasteful, non-productive financing and overhead costs for Rhode Islanders, compared with Governor Gina Raimondo’s RhodeWorks plan, which increases Rhode Island’s debt burden and tolls the trucking industry to pay for it.
Specific savings that can be achieved by adopting a Pay As You Go approach include:
- $563 million in interest costs
- $49 million in financing debt and service reserve costs
- $43+ million in tolling infrastructure (gantries and administration)
Cuts to corporate welfare and other non-essential spending programs can pay for the project instead. Prioritizing infrastructure spending in the state’s existing budget, there would be no need to identify significant new sources of revenue that would drain money from the private sector, make Rhode Island even less competitive with our neighbors, and place unnecessary downward pressure on an already stagnant state economy.
Taxpayers also should not automatically accept the historically high cost of road and bridge repair and construction in our state.
Instead of enriching insider interests such as Wall Street financial institutions, labor unions, and large union-shop contractors, taxpayers should demand fiscal discipline and restraint by limiting the scope of the RhodeWorks project to what Rhode Islanders actually need and can afford.
From a process perspective, Rhode Islanders are fed up with non-transparent backroom deals among insiders that shut out the voice of the public. Few details of the plan’s financials have been released. It is also questionable from a constitutional and ethical point of view whether or not a bond of this magnitude can be, or should be, authorized without a vote of the people.
Governor’s BOND & TOLL plan will waste over $650 million
PAY-AS-YOU-GO a Superior Approach.
The plan under consideration would more than double the cost of the project and would enrich special-interests without any added benefit for Rhode Islanders. The Center’s new report shows how to make RhodeWorks “work” for Rhode Island.
[button url=”https://rifreedom.org/2015/07/making-rhodeworks-work-for-rhode-islanders/” target=”_self” size=”medium” style=”royalblue” ] Read the PayGo Report here [/button]
2015 Legislator Scorecard – Now Live!
HOW DOES YOUR REPRESENTATIVE OR SENATOR RANK?
Preliminary ratings show RI General Assembly turns state in the wrong direction once again!
[button url=”https://rifreedom.org/rifreedomindex/” target=”_self” size=”medium” style=”royalblue” ] Interactive Scorecard Here [/button]Rhode Island Employment Snapshot, May 2015: Hockey Sticks and Cliff Jumping
[Click here for the printable one-page PDF of this post.]
The headline news is that Rhode Island’s unemployment rate dipped below 6% in May for the first time since November 2007, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). For some perspective, a fifth grader grinding out the space between Thanksgiving and Christmas when the Ocean State’s unemployment rate left the 5-6% range behind was preparing to graduate from high school when it slipped the other way.
Improvement in Rhode Island’s employment numbers has been a long slog, and as recently as this October, the unemployment rate was still over 7%. In late 2013, the unemployment rate began falling about a full percentage point every six months, roughly. The big difference of the last six months, as the first chart below shows, is that the reason isn’t that the labor force kept disappearing. We’re in hockey-stick territory, now. (That is if one believes the numbers; these first-half boosts have tended to be revised down significantly.)
The second chart shows that Rhode Island remains far behind its neighbors when it comes to recovering lost employment. Both Connecticut and Massachusetts are now well above their labor force and employment rates as of January 2007, while Rhode Island isn’t even close. For those two states, however, the increase in employment and (especially) labor force is not quite as recent a development.
The third chart shows how peculiar the numbers actually are. Both labor force and employment are supposed to come independently from survey data, pegged to certain benchmarks, but the blue line, which shows the actual employment data, presents a smooth downward curve. The red line shows what the curve would have been if the labor force had not shrunk since January 2007, and it ends in a conspicuous cliff.
In May, unemployment would still have been 8.9%. More tellingly, though, it would still have been 11.0% as recently as December.
Statement: Open And Contentious Debate Being Stifled By The Status Quo
STATEMENT
June 17, 2015
Open And Contentious Debate Being Stifled By the Status Quo
Budget The Culmination Of Months Of Back-Room Negotiations And Special Deals
The floor session addressing the state’s budget in the Rhode Island House of Representatives was short, pervasively unanimous, and light on opposition action. The momentum of the evening – the culmination of months of back-room negotiations and special deals – was so strong that Republicans did not even put forward a plan that their caucus had developed as an alternative for funding infrastructure without debt.
The Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity has already released a statement on the budget, itself, and the details are largely unchanged. On the day after the vote, however, Rhode Islanders should find it shocking that insiders and special interests have our government so locked up that neither conservatives nor progressives can muster sustained political opposition to a budget that claims so much authority for the government and spends so much of the people’s money.
Providing an alternative to the status quo thinking about government is core to the Center’s mission. Now more than ever, the people of Rhode Island must work independently of their government to change minds, to change the debate, and to change the direction in which the Ocean State is headed.
Only a well-informed, passionate electorate can put Rhode Islanders back at the center of their state’s decision-making process and foster freedom and prosperity. If there is no open and contentious debate inside the State House, then it is only more critical for there to be open and contentious debate outside of it.
Media Contact:
Mike Stenhouse, CEO
401.429.6115 | info@rifreedom.org
About the Center
The nonpartisan RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity is Rhode Island’s premiere free-enterprise think tank. The mission of the 501c3 nonprofit organization is to return government to the people by opposing special-interest politics and advancing proven free-market solutions that can transform lives by restoring economic competitiveness, increasing educational opportunities, and protecting individual freedoms.
STATEMENT: General Assembly Budget – More of the Same
STATEMENT
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 10, 2015
2016 Budget Has No Broad-based Reforms
No Game Changing Economic Ideas
Continued Special-Interest Spending
Providence, RI — The General Assembly’s proposed FY-2016 budget plan, consistent with recent annual budgets, and despite the positive spin from lawmakers, includes no broad-based plan to boost Rhode Island’s stagnant jobs market, according to the nonpartisan Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity. The Center maintains that the budget gives government more power in attempting to orchestrate economic development and represents a further departure from proven free-market principles
While the budget does include a number of positive elements, there are off-setting negative elements that will largely serve to maintain the Ocean State’s stagnant status quo. In fact, in its initial ratings of 151 bills on its annual Legislative Scorecard, the Center scored 92 bills as having a negative impact, with only 59 bills rated as positive.
“Our state levies high taxes, spends at high levels, and has amassed high debt … yet when you look at our business climate, infrastructure and education, it is obvious that taxpayers are receiving low value for their hard-earned tax dollars,” said Mike Stenhouse, CEO for the Center. “Once again special-interest insiders will benefit at the expense of average Rhode Islanders.”
The plan’s government-centric approach toward economic development that favors unions and targeted industries is merely an extension of the same, failed public policy approach that is responsible for sinking Rhode Island into its current economic rut. The Center, instead, recommends broad based tax and spending reductions as the primary means to boost the economy, as have been highly successful in North Carolina.
Among the minor, positive elements in the budget are the elimination of income tax on social security and the sales tax on commercial energy; the reduction of the corporate tax; the minimal Medicaid reforms; and the exclusion of the Taylor Swift tax and the trucker tolls.
On the negative side, are new taxes on health insurance premiums and on vacation home rentals, and higher taxes on cigarettes; union hand-outs such as spending for all day kindergarten and construction jobs; and multiple corporate welfare programs such as the real estate development tax credit, the vendor relocation tax credit, and the I-195 redevelopment fund.
Other major issues are still outstanding, some that will impact municipal budgets and local governmental sovereignty:
- A realistic plan to address the state’s crumbling roads and bridges
- The pro firefighter and municipal employee collective bargaining bills
- Bills to reduce the negative impacts of RhodeMap RI
- The Pawtucket Red Sox stadium deal
Media Contact:
Mike Stenhouse, CEO
401.429.6115 | info@rifreedom.org
About the Center
The nonpartisan RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity is Rhode Island’s premiere free-enterprise think tank. The mission of the 501c3 nonprofit organization is to return government to the people by opposing special-interest politics and advancing proven free-market solutions that can transform lives by restoring economic competitiveness, increasing educational opportunities, and protecting individual freedoms.
Rhode Island Employment Snapshot, April 2015: The Annual Wait for Realistic Numbers
[Click here for the printable one-page PDF of this post.]
In a news report that drifted into this author’s awareness, recently, an analyst explained Rhode Island’s employment boost in terms of seasonal changes. To the contrary, the numbers are supposed to be seasonally adjusted (to bring out underlying trends), and the pattern of this year looks a lot like the patter of last year. Rhode Island begins the first six months with an inexplicable jump in employment, which levels off or decreases and is followed by a substantial downward revision when the data for the year is in.
Therefore, as we assess the Ocean State’s 6.1% unemployment rate, as reported by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which is now out of the bottom 10 nationally and is not the last in New England, we should be aware that we’re likely just in the (largely unrealistic) annual upswing.
According to the BLS, in March, a net 2,846 Rhode Islanders gained employment, while 1,826 joined the labor force. Those two variables are the basis for the unemployment rate. The first chart below shows that this year represents the start of a rebound in a long decline… if the numbers are correct.
The second chart shows how far Rhode Island is behind its neighbors. (Note that this month’s iteration has a different axis to accommodate Massachusetts’s growth.) Both Connecticut and Massachusetts are now well above their labor force and employment rates as of January 2007, while Rhode Island isn’t even close. Indeed, beginning in April, Massachusetts now has better growth in employment than in labor force.
The final chart shows the importance of labor force. The blue line is the official unemployment rate; the red line is what the rate would be if residents weren’t giving up their quest for work. Unemployment would still be 9.5% in Rhode Island with the January 2007 size of the labor force.
Bright Today Scholarship Legislation to be Heard Wednesday in RI Senate
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 19, 2015
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| Bright Today Scholarship Legislation to be Heard Wednesday in RI Senate |
| Center Publishes New Booklet Summarizing Win-Win-Win Policy Solution |
| Providence, RI – Bi-partisan Senate legislation that would empower parents with greater choices when it comes to determining the best educational path for their children will be debated Wednesday in the Senate Committee on Education in Room 313 of the State House.
At the 4:30 pm hearing for S0607, which would provide ‘Bright Today’ scholarships for private educations, and which would allow open enrollment within public schools, the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity will provide testimony and will distribute a report-booklet, which highlights the key findings of multiple publications by the Center. “In the five months since the launch of this school choice campaign, there has not been one credible argument made against this WIN-WIN-WIN policy solution,” said Mike Stenhouse, CEO for the Center. “The booklet, The Way of the Future, shows how this major educational reform can provide immediate relief for thousands of under-served students, without costing taxpayers a single new dime and without adversely impacting public schools. The booklet lays out a full description and narrative on the benefits of the Bright Today Scholarship program. Highlights include: Low value by government-run schools. Public schools in Rhode Island yield one of the lowest taxpayer values in New England and across the nation, failing far too many students.The public supports school choice. Based on behavior and public surveys, Rhode Islanders firmly support empowering parents with private school options.Not a partisan issue. Choice is not a Democrat-Republican or left-right issue, and is supported by constituencies from across the political spectrum. Demand exceeds supply. Legislative and administrative restrictions on existing charter school and corporate tax credit scholarship programs means parental demand for alternative schooling is greater than what the state allows.
Bright Today Scholarships are a form of Educational Savings Accounts (ESAs) where, just this week, Tennessee became the fourth state to officially adopt the innovative scholarship program. The bi-partisan House bill (H5790), also with a Democrat lead sponsor, is expected to be heard in the House Finance Committee in the coming weeks. |
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Background: In January 2015, the nonprofit Center published The Case for Expanded Educational Choice, putting forth arguments why the time is now to empower parents with more educational options for their children.
In March 2015, the Center published a report, The Way of the Future, describing the Bright Today Scholarship program outlined by the legislation.
In April 2015, The Math of Educational Choice, showed how most public school districts would actually achieve net fiscal savings via the Bright Today Scholarship program.
The main tenets of the “Bright Today Educational Choice” campaign, are that no child should be condemned to attend a failing school; that every family should feel confident that their children can dream of a bright future; that no child should have to wait for tomorrow’s reform promises; and that every child deserves an education of their family’s choice – today. A dedicated campaign website can be viewed at BrightToday.org.
The Center is part of a growing coalition, currently comprised of the nationally renowned Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, as well as number of in-state advocacy groups. For more information, concerned parents can also visit the Center’s ed choice home page at RIFreedom.com/EdChoiceRI.
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| Media Contact: |
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Mike Stenhouse, CEO
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| About the Center |
| The nonpartisan RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity is Rhode Island’s premiere free-enterprise think tank. The mission of the 501c3 nonprofit organization is to return government to the people by opposing special-interest politics and advancing proven free-market solutions that can transform lives by restoring economic competitiveness, increasing educational opportunities, and protecting individual freedoms. |