Rhode Island Economy
With all the talk that you’re sure to hear over the next year about “Bush’s recession” and (usually separately) Rhode Island’s financial troubles, it’ll be crucial to maintain proper perspective: Rhode Island payrolls shrank for the second straight month in December and the unemployment rate climbed to 5.5 percent, its highest level in more than…
Not long after I’d circled the following paragraphs in my copy of today’s paper, I noticed a typical bit of ad ignorantiam over on RI Future: Carcieri’s chief budget officer, Rosemary Booth Gallogly, suggested earlier in the week that the administration may have “another alternative if there were a fiscal crisis.” A provision in Rhode…
Take this with a grain of salt–it’s early research after all–but there may have been a substantial breakthrough in Alzheimer’s research: A drug used for arthritis can reverse the symptoms of Alzheimer’s “in minutes”. It appears to tackle one of the main features of the disease – inflammation in the brain. The drug, called Enbrel,…
From Katherine Gregg in Saturday’s Projo… A [spokesman for Governor Donald Carcieri] confirmed that the governor’s staff had also “been approached about the concept of selling both the Rhode Island Lottery and the Pell Bridge.” Some proposals apparently came in unsolicited; others in response to a query from the budget office about opportunities for “public-private…
Perhaps it’s grasping at straws for something on which to hang some optimism, but judging from the cross-section unity among columnists, perhaps the common wisdom in Rhode Island is rocking in the right direction. On page A2, LifeBeat columnist Mark Patinkin head-fakes a silver lining and then highlights the problems of the state in the…
Seasonality is likely a factor, but I’d been intending to offer the anecdotal testimony that the help wanted sections of various local and state papers are more sparse than I’ve ever seen them. Apparently, it isn’t just my impression: Job vacancies in Rhode Island declined from 10,949 in spring 2006 to 8,637 last summer, a…
Subbing for Dan Yorke on WPRO 630AM, Matt Allen has been talking about Rhode Island’s first place ranking among states for lost population, which Marc investigated this morning. I called in to the radio during my commute to mention my finding back in September (and my related Providence Journal op-ed) that, on top of the…
Tipped off by 7 to 7, I went over to the U.S. Census Bureau web site, which has just released population estimates up to July 2007 (raw data here). From the AP summary: Rhode Island is losing residents at a faster clip than any other state in the nation. New population estimates being released today…
Unless I allow my cynicism free rein, it continues to astound me that Poverty Institute types can look at the evidence and persist in their conclusions. A recent jobs study from the institute raised the following concerns: The gap between the haves and have-nots in Rhode Island has widened in recent years and the bulk…
This sort of thing shouldn’t be anywhere near the chopping block: Investors in six start-ups are getting a lucrative reward for betting on local entrepreneurs, part of a new and costly state effort to grow local companies. Last night, the state Economic Development Corporation approved the first applications for the Innovation Tax Credit. The companies…