record number of Rhode Island workers were searching for a job in August as the unemployment rate rose to 8.5 percent, its worst showing in 15 years and more than 2 percentage points above the national rate, according to state data.
The number of people looking for work grew by 4,300 since July to a record-breaking total of 48,800 last month. The state unemployment rate stood at 5.1 percent during the same period last year. Rhode Island shed an estimated 1,200 jobs from July to August, marking the eighth-straight month of jobs losses.
"We're feeling the real estate bust, if you will, very, very strongly," Gov. Don Carcieri said in a brief Statehouse interview Thursday.
The report by the state Department of Labor and Training showed the worst monthly job losses in the manufacturing, banking, finance and insurance sectors. Professional and business services lost 300 workers.
Rhode Island has been in a recession for about a year, and the ongoing turmoil on Wall Street will likely hurt the state, said Leonard Lardaro, an economics professor at the University of Rhode Island who monitors the state economy.
"I feel the national and global economies are slowing, which is going to drag us down further," he said.
Carcieri, a former CEO who has made job growth a major goal, said he believed small businesses were feeling the state's recession the worst.
The rising unemployment rate is likely to exacerbate the state's budget crisis. Unemployed residents pay less in state incomes taxes, buy fewer goods and drive down state sales tax collections.
State lawmakers passed a $6.9 billion budget in June that cut hundreds of millions of dollars in spending to make ends meet. That budget was not balanced, and Rhode Island still faces multimillion-dollar deficits in the coming year.
Other states are hurting, too, according to data released Thursday. Illinois' unemployment rate was 7.3 percent in August; it was 6.6 percent in Tennessee; 6.5 percent in Connecticut; 5.8 percent in New York; and 5.6 percent in Arizona.
9/19/2008 5:43 AM
By RAY HENRY
Associated Press Writer
PROVIDENCE, R.I.
record number of Rhode Island workers were searching for a job in August as the unemployment rate rose to 8.5 percent, its worst showing in 15 years and more than 2 percentage points above the national rate, according to state data.
