Closing In on the Goal of 20,000 Jobs

According to Lynn Arditi of the Projo, statistics reported by Edward Mazze, Rhode Island’s economic forecaster for the New England Economic Partnership (and Dean of the University of Rhode Island’s College of Business Administration) show that Rhode Island will come very close to meeting Governor Donald Carcieri’s job growth goal…

Job growth is expected to peak this year, with 6,800 new jobs, a growth rate of 1.4 percent. Jobs are forecast to grow at half that rate next year, and continue to taper off in 2008. In 2009 and 2010, the forecast is for a job growth rate of just under 1 percent.

If the forecast is accurate, Rhode Island will have gained about 19,300 jobs during the last four years, a growth rate of just under 4 percent. That is just shy of Governor Carcieri's promise to create 20,000 new jobs by the end of his four-year term.

However, the forecast also predicts a slowdown in growth, starting soon…

Job growth is forecast to slow during the next few years, and house prices to level off, then gradually decline, according a forecast to be released today by the New England Economic Partnership.

Nationally, energy prices have spiked, housing prices are leveling off and more and more service jobs are being outsourced to companies abroad. Those global trends, coupled with Rhode Island's budget deficit, high housing prices, noncompetitive tax rates and the inability to attract enough high-paying jobs, among others, are why the state will find it harder in coming years to compete, said Rhode Island's NEEP forecaster, Edward M. Mazze.

We know the Rhode Island House actually favors doing something about the tax-side of the equation, but we don’t yet know what either house of the legislature will propose, if anything, to address Rhode Island’s structural deficit problem. So far, the Governor has been the only statewide political leader willing to address the deficit in public.