A Bird's Eye View of Why RI Has Such a High Unemployment Rate

In the last several posts I analyzed the historical behavior of the number of jobs in Rhode Island, payroll employment, and the number of Rhode Island residents who are employed, resident employment. As I noted, there are significant differences between these two data series, especially since they are obtained from two separate labor market surveys.

In this post, I will provide only one chart, but that chart will allow you to understand very readily why Rhode Island's unemployment is so high and why it hasn't been falling as one would expect during a recovery. Of course, as I was writing that last sentence, I realized that there is a distinct possibility that Rhode Island is no longer in a recovery, which I discussed in the last two posts. For now, I still haven't concluded that Rhode Island has actually entered a double-dip recession, so as far as I can tell, Rhode Island is clinging to its two-year old recovery by its finger nails. I guess this makes it fortunate that we didn't raise the sales tax on finger nail establishment services last year!

I want to focus on the employment rate for Rhode Island: the ratio of resident employment to the resident working-age population. Both of these series are derived from the household survey. Ideally, this ratio should rise during recoveries, as the number of employed residents rises as a proportion of the working-age population, and fall during recessions, as employed residents become a smaller proportion of the population. But this is Rhode Island -- we don't do things like everyone else!

The chart below shows the historical behavior of the employment rate for Rhode Island since January of 2000 (click to enlarge).

When Rhode Island's payroll employment peaked all the way back in December of 2006 (a full year before the US peak), our state's employment rate reached its maximum at just below 66 percent (0.66 in the chart). It has literally been all downhill since then.

Clearly, the serious recession we experienced brought about continuous large reductions in the proportion of our state's population that is employed. However, consistent with the charts from the previous two posts, Rhode Island's employment rate has been declining throughout this entire recovery! At the end of the last recession, around late 2009 into very early 2010, the employment rate actually recovered a bit, moving back to 60 percent. Ironically, since our current (?) recovery began in February of 2010, we have seen a clear downtrend in this ratio.


The inevitable consequence of the fact that an ever-smaller proportion of Rhode Island's population remains employed (our declining employment rate) has been a high unemployment rate that seems incapable of falling below 11 percent over any prolonged period of time.

There are several ironic elements in all of this. Recall that resident employment is not restricted to jobs in Rhode Island. It includes Rhode Island residents who work either in Rhode Island or in other places. That is significant at the present time since Massachusetts is doing so much better than Rhode Island is, as its jobless rate is one we can only fantasize about here. Also, resident employment includes self-employed persons, an element that often escapes from the other labor market survey. Positive out-of-state and self-employment should have been able to at least moderate if not reverse our declining employment rate by this point. Yet it hasn't.

To conclude, let me briefly cite the math that underlies a declining ratio. The fact that the employment rate, the ratio of resident employment to our working-age population, is falling through time means that in percentage terms, resident employment has been falling relative to our state's working-age population. It doesn't take much to figure out that this has played a central element in our state's high unemployment rate.

Just When You Thought Things Here Couldn't Get Worse!!

In the prior few posts, I outlined how badly Rhode Island's payroll employment has been performing of late. In fact, in the last post I raised the possibility that Rhode Island might actually have entered a double-dip recession. While this is a distinct possibility, I am not necessarily willing to embrace that conclusion -- yet. In this post, I will show the recent behavior of the "other" kind of employment: resident employment.

What makes life interesting for persons like myself who follow Rhode Island's economy is that the two employment series are derived from different surveys.

Payroll employment comes from the Current Employment Survey (CES) for the near-term results, which are estimates of the far-more inclusive Establishment Survey. Synchronizing the results of these two surveys, which occurs with the new January data each year, is called rebenchmarking. Think of payroll employment as the number of jobs in Rhode Island, as these data are derived from surveys of employers in this state.

Resident employment is obtained from the Household Survey, which as its name implies, is a survey of Rhode Island residents obtained from individual households in this state. Values of this series too are often revised along with the new January data each year.

There are several critical differences between these data series. First, resident employment includes the number of employed Rhode Island residents, no matter where they work, whether in Rhode Island or in other places. In addition to this, resident employment includes self-employed individuals, a very critical factor to track when the state of Rhode Island's economy is changing. These two factors are capable of causing large and significant divergences between payroll and resident employment.

You saw the recent behavior of payroll employment in the prior posts. It has deteriorated during the last six months. What about the behavior of resident employment? The chart below (click to enlarge) shows Resident Employment for Rhode Island since 2009.

There are several amazing features of this chart. First, note that when the current recovery for Rhode Island began in June of 2010, resident employment was actually falling! The level of "support" for resident employment here is just above 500,000. Support held until June of 2011, when resident employment dropped below 500k. What had been support then became "resistance." Resident employment recently made a run at the new resistance line of 500k, but that attempt failed. It has now been declining for the past few months. One thing should be clear from this chat, however: resident employment in Rhode Island has been on a very well-defined downtrend throughout this entire recovery. Now that's very strange! I have always noted how idiosyncratic Rhode Island's economy is, but this is a new one even for me. Wait, though, a further look at the data in this chart produces a truly amazing graph: year-over-year changes in resident employment:

This would be a very strong chart if we were to turn it upside down. Unfortunately it has the correct orientation. The bright moments for Rhode Island, then, the relatively small number of green bars that indicate year-over-year increases, occurred during the May through November of 2010 period. I guess it is safe to say that for Rhode Island: "Those were the "good old days."

What this rather scary chart reveals is that the factor dominating changes in the household survey for a number of years now has been Rhode Island's declining population. Remember, our state's population has been shrinking consistently since July of 2004  -- yet another dubious distinction for Rhode Island. The pace of economic activity here has helped at times, as have job prospects for our residents in Connecticut and Massachusetts. However, I have to conclude that what this chart really illustrates is the set of major structural negatives and problems facing Rhode Island. At present, are we really the "masters of our own fate?" Even if we are, there are serious questions about how much longer that status would remain intact.

Our State's Jobless Rate is Declining. Is That Good News?

In recent months, Rhode Island's unemployment has been falling. In fact, whenever the monthly labor market numbers are released, the local media focus largely, if not entirely, on the unemployment rate and how it changed. So, based on these recent declines, Rhode Island's economy must be doing noticeably better. Or is it?

First, it is critical that this statistic be viewed in relative, not absolute, terms. While Rhode Island's unemployment rate has fallen from 11.5 percent, its level from August through December of 2010, to 10.8 percent in June of 2011, it remains the third highest in the entire US! So, Rhode Island continues to be known for its beautiful beaches and its very high unemployment rate. Quite a niche, isn't it? Let me also state for the record that I don't believe that our state's jobless rate was constant over that long of a period. The single value for the entire August to December of 2010 period is doubtless the result of a smoothing procedure utilized by the US Department of Labor.

Second, we must not forget to consider the way the unemployment rate itself is calculated. To be counted as unemployed, and therefore part of the monthly statistic, an unemployed person must be unemployed (obviously), physically able to work, and this is the kicker, actively seeking employment. What that last condition indicates is that it is quite possible for the unemployment rate the fall not as the result of higher employment, as most people think has to be the case, but because unemployed persons opt to cease their active job search. In economics, this is known as the "discouraged worker effect." Actually, that's a pretty dumb name, since these people obviously aren't working and they're well beyond being discouraged. So, if an unemployed person stops actively seeking employment, that person is no longer counted as being part of the labor force, and is therefore not counted as being among the "officially" unemployed. In light of all of this, you should always view the unemployment rate and labor force participation together. Has this odd combination of declining labor force and falling unemployment been occurring in Rhode Island lately? A picture is worth a thousand words. The chart below (click to enlarge) shows these two elements in Rhode Island for the last twelve months.

Do you see a pattern here? Actually, how can you miss it? For the entire time that Rhode Island's unemployment rate has been declining (all of 2011), our state' labor force participation rate has been declining as well. Note: the labor force participation rate  (the red line in the chart above) is the percentage of our state's working age population that is in the labor force. Based on the chart above, there is definite evidence consistent with recent declines in our state's unemployment rate being at least partially related to Rhode Island residents dropping out of the labor force (as they stop actively seeking employment). And there can be strange results from the monthly Household Survey (see previous blog post on this). But this doesn't tell the entire story.

Third, there are actually two labor market surveys. The unemployment rate is obtained from the Household Survey. I won't tell you how small the sample size is for Rhode Island. This survey looks at Rhode Island's working age population and does not restrict employment to being exclusively within Rhode Island. So, Rhode Island residents working in other states are included in this survey, as are self-employed individuals. The other labor market survey, the Establishment Survey (and approximations to this by the Current Employment Survey in the short-term), focus exclusively on jobs within Rhode Island. Self-employed individuals, however, are excluded from this survey. So, given these differences, it is not uncommon for the two surveys to give different results, sometimes very different results. In recent months, survey results were noticeably different at times. Fortunately, though, the results for June were more in line with each other. Looking at recent results for this employment survey, job gains since January of this year (compared to a year ago), rose from 4,100 to a high of 9,400 in May, before declining to 8,800 in June. Throughout that time period, job loss fluctuated between 4,100 and 5,100. So, the net change in payroll employment here (what the local media inevitably reports as "new jobs" has actually been in an uptrend since January of this year. For the most recent three months, the net change in employment has been greater than 4,000. Thus, part of the reason for our state's declining unemployment rate over this period has in fact been for the "right" reason - improving employment (also see previous blog post dealing with this).

Finally, the unemployment rate is what economists refer to as a lagging indicator. In other words, its behavior this month to a large extent reflects events and trends that occurred in past months. Embodied within the way the unemployment rate is calculated is the likelihood that when an economy begins to improve, some discouraged workers will begin to actively seek employment once again. When that happens, they are once again counted as being part of the labor force and unemployed. This will often result is an increase in the unemployment rate, not a decrease, as one would normally assume when economic conditions improve. Rhode Island's declining participation rate itself is a net change of persons leaving (discouraged workers) and persons re-entering the labor force once they re-commence active job search.

So, has Rhode Island's economic performance, as summarized by the recent performance of its jobless rate been improving? Yes and no. Unequivocally! To summarize: Rhode Island's unemployment rate has been improving of late, yet it remains among the highest in the US; improvements in our state's jobless rate are not entirely the result of a better employment climate, but at least partially the result of our unemployed dropping out of the labor force.

MY REQUEST TO THE LOCAL MEDIA (an economist's pathetic plea!):
Please stop focusing so much on our state's unemployment rate, it is not a very accurate basis for portraying our state's overall economic performance. You need a much broader basis to do this accurately, such as my Current Conditions Index.

If, however, you opt to continue using the unemployment rate as your primary basis for assessing economic activity here, when you drive home after writing your story, only look in your rear view mirror for guidance the entire time (a practical example of relying on a lagging indicator). Let's see whether or not you make it home in one piece!

May 2011 Labor Market Data

The labor market data for May of 2011 have now been released. As always, Rhode Islanders and their media focused on the unchanged unemployment rate from April, 10.9%. And, in numerous stories, employment was described as "adding 1,300 jobs compared to April." If one goes behind the numbers, as I always do, there's a lot more going on, and as always, the jobs added figure that was reported was incorrect.

Perspective: I highly recommend that persons consider not just looking at data like this by focusing on the change from one month to the next (called month-to-month, or M/M). Very often it gets revised, so what we think happened this month ends up being changed, for better or worse, the next month. While it is useful (albeit fleeting) to look at month-to-month change, it is preferable to consider both what happened compared to a year ago (called year-over-year, or Y/Y) and the one-month change.

Unemployment Rate: Looking at Rhode Island's unchanged (M/M) unemployment rate in May, 10.9%, this was well below its level last May's value of 11.7%. However, our state's labor force fell over this period, by a number roughly equivalent to the decline in the number of unemployed. Conclusion: the "improvement" in our state's jobless rate from a year ago was largely due to unemployed Rhode Islanders dropping out of the labor force which statistically lead to their no longer being counted when the rate was calculated.

Another point I need to make concerns an extreme rarity that occurred with the May data. Unemployment data along with the number of working Rhode Island residents comes from the Household Survey. Forgive me as I provide the basic labor market identity:

LF = E + U

or Rhode Island's labor force (LF) for any period is the sum of the number employed of employed Rhode Islanders (E), referred to as resident employment, plus the number unemployed (U) Rhode Islanders. Here's the rare occurrence we witnessed with the monthly data (change from April to May of 2011):

Change in LF = -1,400

Change in E = -1,400

Change in U = -100

Obviously, there is rounding error here which should be overlooked. Here's the oddity: while our state's unemployment rate remained unchanged at 10.9%, there were 1,400 fewer Rhode Island residents employed (we'll overlook the change in U here). How and why would employed Rhode Islanders drop out of the labor force? It would be very easy to explain why unemployed persons would drop out -- lack of job opportunities. But employed??? The best explanation I can come up with is that a number of self-employed Rhode Islanders weren't doing so well and packed things in (literally). I guess they then went to a status where they opted not to look for work, leading to roughly similar declines in resident employment and the labor force. Will this oddity be present when the June data are released in a month? I wouldn't at all be surprised if it disappears!

Employment: As if all of this weren't confusing enough, there are actually two separate measures of employment. The first, presented above, from the household survey, is resident employment, the number of Rhode Islanders working, whether in Rhode Island or somewhere else. There is a second survey, the establishment survey, that counts the number of jobs in Rhode Island, or payroll employment. Unlike resident employment, this measure does not count self-employment. And, in order to compare adjacent months, the data must take seasonality into account, using seasonal adjustment.

Comparing month-to-month changes in employment, for resident employment, there was a decline of 1,400 (see above). For payroll employment, the gain that was reported was 1,300. The fact that there were different changes in both measures is not uncommon. What must be taken into account, however, is that the payroll employment figure for jobs added is almost always reported incorrectly.

To give a sense for why this is so, let me change to year-over-year payroll employment change, the measure I pay most attention to since monthly changes are often modified the next month. The chart below (click to enlarge) gives the number of jobs added and jobs lost over the last year.

Let's focus on May of 2011. For that month, Rhode Island had job gains of 9,500 versus job losses of 5,300. The net change in employment (year-over-year) was therefore 4,200. The local media, however, always reports this as 4,200 jobs added, which is clearly incorrect. Since February of this year, job gains in Rhode Island have clearly accelerated. Sadly, job loss has remained stubbornly high, leading to overall employment growth (i.e., change) of less that one percent (0.9% for May). 

So, this look into the labor market data released each month should illustrate that there's a lot more going on than any simple explanation can accurately conclude. Keep in mind that there are two labor market surveys, not one, and these often reflect different forces at work and thus come to different conclusions. And, for someone who has been following all of this in depth for as long as I have, sometimes I don't even understand all of what's going on. I guess that's why God invented data revisions!