New Report Shows “Weak” Prospects For Job Growth In Rhode Island Under Dem Gov Gina Raimondo

While Democrat Governor Gina Raimondo has claimed to have improved Rhode Island’s business climate and says that the state’s economy is “doing fine,” a new report from a top Rhode Island economist doesn’t support her rosy assessment. Michael Lynch, an economist who tracks the state’s economy for government leaders, released a report asserting that Rhode Island’s “prospects for growth are weak” and payroll growth is on pace to rank near the bottom in the country by 2022.

Lynch also noted Rhode Island’s disadvantages in education, noting that “the state falls well short of educational attainment levels in heavy knowledge-based economies,” which puts Rhode Island at a “disadvantage when it comes to growing the presence of its skilled services economy.”

Lynch’s assessment comes a week after Bloomberg reported that Rhode Island has experienced the largest decline in retail jobs over the last decade, made worse by the closure of local retailer Benny’s this year. Coupled with the departure of Alexion Pharmaceuticals from the state, Rhode Island continues to bleed high-paying jobs under Raimondo and reported a loss of 3,700 jobs in September alone.

While Raimondo appears content to dig her head in the sand when faced with her state’s economic challenges, the truth is that Rhode Island’s economy has remained completely stagnant under her leadership, with anemic job growth, losses in key sectors, consistent bottom 10 rankings for business, and failed education policies that leave workers less able to compete. Rhode Island deserves better leadership come 2018.

WPRI reports:

“An economist who tracks Rhode Island for government leaders has delivered a decidedly mixed report on the health of the state’s economy.
 
…the prospects for growth are weak and there are a number of reasons for concern, Michael Lynch, a principal economist at the consulting firm IHS Markit, wrote in a report released earlier this month…
 
Through 2022, Lynch predicts Rhode Island payrolls will grow by just 0.4% a year on average, a rate that would rank near the bottom among the 50 states, at 48th…
 
Lynch warned that retail employment is likely to continue to decline in Rhode Island amid an ongoing migration of sales from brick-and-mortar stores to e-commerce. (A recent Bloomberg report showed Rhode Island has lost 7.1% of its retail jobs since 2007, a larger share than any other state.) Rhode Island manufacturing “has been in significant decline for decades,” too, though it “showed some faint signs of life in the post-recession years,” he wrote…
 
Overall, IHS expects Rhode Island’s population and labor force to grow about 0.1% a year on average of the next 10 years. ‘This will rank among the lowest in the country,’ Lynch noted, and is ‘reflected in our forecasts for lackluster employment growth…’
 
Another problem: although Rhode Islanders are more likely to have postsecondary degrees than the national average, ‘the state falls well short of educational attainment levels in heavy knowledge-based economies like Massachusetts,’ Lynch wrote. ‘This puts the Ocean State at a disadvantage when it comes to growing the presence of its skilled services economy.’”