In the third quarter of 2024, one signal that measures how willing consumers are to spend money showed significant improvement compared to the previous quarter: Net sales tax receipts jumped 2.4 percent. Meanwhile, in another sign of good news, the state’s economy grew 2.5 percent in the second quarter according to the latest available data, outpacing New England’s 2.2 percent jump over the same period. Also in the third quarter, Rhode Island-based jobs declined slightly, by 1,800 positions — a 0.3 percent drop. That’s still up by more than 5,000 jobs compared toa year ago. “Those are all positive signs,” said Michael DiBiase, president and CEO of Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council, which, along with Bryant University’s Center for Global and Regional Economic Studies, were behind the release of a quarterly report on Rhode Island’s key economic indicators . “By some measures we are performing better than Massachusetts and Connecticut, which is not typical for Rhode Island.” But one weakness in the state’s economy comes from the labor market. More people are looking for work, with the labor participation rate rising 1.6 percent in the third quarter compared to a year ago, to a little over 65 percent, the highest rate in nearly a decade. People looking for jobs is healthy for the labor market. But the downside is that it has pushed up the unemployment rate to 4.6 percent, lagging behind New England’s 3.4 percent. It marks the fifth consecutive quarterly increase in the state’s jobless rate. “Our number of jobs available has been going up,” DiBiase told the Globe on Thursday. “But definitely there is a mismatch between the available jobs and the people looking for work.” DiBiase pointed out that one aspect of Rhode Island’s labor market is that some residents are based here but work in neighboring states. This explains why the number of employed Rhode Islanders is close to 565,000, about 54,000 more than the number of jobs in the state. “It shows that the Rhode Island labor market could go a little weaker, but there’s enough opportunities for Rhode Islanders elsewhere that we’re still seeing those numbers going up,” DiBiase said. The education and health services segment of the labor market, in which the most people in the state are employed, added 800 positions to 113,500 jobs. Meanwhile, the leisure and hospitality industry — a sector that helped power the post-pandemic jobs recovery — lost more than 3,000 jobs, reflecting a downturn in the restaurant business seen across the country along with a drop in leisure travel, DiBiase said. He added that the Rhode Island economy showed more positives that negatives in the third quarter. But for a small state, a consistent rise in the unemployment rate is worrying. “When you get to 4.6 percent, then it starts it starts to get a little bit more concerning,” he said. “If you look back, that’s not a high number. But we don’t have those kind of swings, you know, without a recession.”
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