September 21, 2012
August Employment Data for Rhode Island and the Nation
Once again, the headline is that Rhode Island's unemployment rate fell another tenth of a percent, to 10.7%. And at least it's true, this month, that employment went up instead of down. (The past few drops in the unemployment rate were a result of people giving up their job searches, so they weren't counted in the statistics.)
But people continued to leave the state's labor force, and the employment increase wasn't exactly dramatic, giving the impression that our decline hasn't turned around, but has edged toward stagnation.