freedom

Jobs & Opportunity Index (47th in JOI): Employment and Jobs Turn Down

Employment and Jobs Turn Down
Providence, RI – The only changes in the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity’s Jobs & Opportunity Index (JOI) report for February came from the employment and jobs data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), and the results weren’t good.
Three of the 12 datapoints of the index changed for this iteration. Employment, labor force, and RI-based jobs, which all dropped significantly.
“Rhode Islanders don’t have to guess, anymore,” said the Center’s research director, Justin Katz. “The employment situation in Rhode Island is getting worse, bucking the national trend. Before things deteriorate much more, we must demand change from our elected representatives, who tend to pile on problems year after year instead of helping.”
As Katz pointed out in a related post on the Center’s news and commentary site, the Ocean State Current, the downturn conspicuously began the month that a progressive paid-time-off mandate went into effect last summer.
Additional charts and details of each of JOI’s three sub-factors can be viewed here.