The Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training has issued revised jobs and employment data, and contrary to previous assurances from the state’s Director of Revenue Analysis, Paul Dion, the more accurate data raised the unemployment rate.  According to the DLT press release, December’s new, higher rate of 9.3% is now the lowest the rate has been since the recession kicked off… but only because previous results in the eight-to-nine-percent range were incorrect.

The more-disconcerting observation, however, comes by putting the data on a line chart.  The blue line is labor force (people employed or looking for work); the red line is employment; the black lines are the results before the revision.  Especially with employment, what had looked like a bit of an up-and-down rollercoaster now looks like straight decline.

It’s true that the number of Rhode Island-based jobs increased with the revision, but I’ve argued before that there’s reason for concern in these seemingly contradictory trends.  Arguably the main thing that the employment numbers capture that the jobs numbers don’t is the people operating the businesses, whether as owners, self-employed, or independent contractors.

That is, to the degree that the employees of established companies (and governments) are doing better than thought, the number of people independently innovating and working to build new, competitive businesses must be even lower.  If that assessment is correct, the opportunity for future recovery is probably reduced.

That possibility might be exacerbated if the jobs numbers contain more part-time jobs than thought (perhaps in response to the Affordable Care Act), with people who were fully employed taking multiple part-time jobs.  In that case, the number of jobs could go up without its indicating any real economic growth at all.

Whatever the case, the upshot of the now-apparent long slide of employment is that Rhode Islanders have to wake up and stop allowing our government to play games year after year.  Rhode Island spent 2013 losing all of the employment gains it had made in 2012.  We can’t afford a year that brings us into uncharted territory.