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Jobs & Opportunity Index (JOI), May 2018
What There Is Is Positive
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Providence, RI – With the nation heading in a healthy direction, Rhode Island’s positive numbers on the metrics underlying the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity‘s Jobs & Opportunity Index (JOI) weren’t enough to get the Ocean State out of 47th place. However, the Job Outlook Factor, which gauges Rhode Islanders’ optimism about job opportunities, did regain one of the five spots lost last month, notching up to 22nd in the country.
Overall, five of the 12 data points of the index changed for this iteration. Unfortunately, the Food and Nutrition Service added a footnote to this month’s release for SNAP (foodstamps) saying that Rhode Island has not updated its numbers since January 2017. The reason is the failure of the Unified Health Infrastructure Project (UHIP) to work as advertised.
“Rhode Islanders should be happy to see the various measures of employment and jobs improving, and to see fewer Rhode Islanders relying on Medicaid,” said the Center’s research director, Justin Katz. “Still, Rhode Island needs to move quickly if it wants to capitalize on the national economic improvement, and we’ve seen no sign that our elected officials understand the urgency or what needs to be done.”
 Rhode Island continues to straggle well behind the U.S. average on JOI and even farther behind the average for New England.Additional charts and details of each of JOI’s three sub-factors can be viewed here.
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