Rhode Island Jobless Rate Drops To 11.2 Percent, 13.8K Jobs Added

CRANSTON, RI – Unemployment in Rhode Island dropped over the past month, but remains higher than the national average at 11.2 percent, according to data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor on Friday.

Rhode Island’s 11.2 percent rate of unemployment dropped from 12.6 percent in June, officials said, who indicated that the state was one of 30 nationwide where rates had dropped over the previous month. According to the Department of Labor, the national average sits at 10.2 percent as of Friday, which is 0.9 percent lower than in June, but is 6.5 percent higher than the national unemployment rate was at this time in 2019.

The jobless rate in Rhode Island a year ago this time was 3.6 percent but has increased dramatically due to the coronavirus pandemic.

On Thursday, the state Department of Labor and Training announced that state officials plan to seekfederal funding that would provide a $300 per person boost in unemployment benefits, the Providence Journal reported. The announcement came a day after Gov. Gina Raimondo said in her weekly news conference that the state had not applied for federal funding.

“They haven’t actually applied because there’s nothing to apply for,” Raimondo said Wednesday.

“We don’t yet know how it would work, how much we’d be eligible to receive, who would be eligible. We’re all just waiting for the Trump administration to put out some guidelines.”

The state Department of Labor and Training reported Thursday that 13,800 jobs were added across Rhode Island in July, which means that nearly half of the 98,100 jobs that were lost in March and April at the start of the pandemic have been recovered.

Raimondo announced that federal officials had created the assistance for states under an executive order from President Donald Trump. The Providence Journal reported Thursday that state officials re-evaluated the decision to apply for federal assistance after conducting conversation with officials from other states, namely Massachusetts, which has the highest unemployment rate in the country at 15.1 percent.

The extra funds, retroactive to Aug. 1, will be available for at least three weeks and will last until FEMA funding runs out, the newspaper reported.

According to reports, Raimondo said during Wednesday's briefing that the state’s “back of the envelope” calculations showed the program, which asks states to contribute $100 to a recipients’ $400 weekly unemployment insurance bonus, would cost about $10 million a week. She said as of Wednesday that it wasn’t clear if the state could pull that money from federal coronavirus relief funds.