A Wall Street Journal article in which Jennifer Levitz highlights an interesting corporate trend could almost give hope to Rhode Islanders:

Americans have traditionally moved to find jobs. But with a growing reluctance by workers to relocate, some companies have decided to move closer to potential hires. Firms are expanding to cities with a bounty of underemployed, retrieving men and women from freelance gigs, manual labor and part-time jobs with duties that, one worker said, required only a heartbeat to perform.

With the national jobless rate near a 16-year low, these pockets of underemployment are a wellspring for companies that recognize most new hires already have jobs but can be poached with better pay and room for advancement. That’s preferable to competing for higher-priced workers at home.

These sorts of natural incentives are how the market heals economic wounds and maximizes progress.  Unfortunately, if you’re an un-or-under-employed Rhode Islander, your hopes for this sort of rescue are regularly shattered by a General Assembly that year after year after year makes it more difficult and more expensive to do business in your state.  Yesterday brought a doozie, with the passage of the ill-advised and expensive progressive wish fulfillment of a mandatory paid time off benefit for all employees in companies with 18 or more employees.

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As I explored in last week’s Last Impressions podcast, transportation and communication technology should be making it easier to relocate businesses and families.  Rhode Island’s natural beauty and location should be a huge advantage in that regard, but our government is determined to eliminate all incentive for businesses to be the ones to do the moving (unless they want to be government-dependents right off the bat with a payoff), so it’ll have to be the workers who move elsewhere, which is exactly what we’ve seen over the last couple of decades.