According to Andy Smith in today’s Providence Journal, the jobless rate in RI increased from 8.8% to 8.9%. The national rate is 7.4%. We also lost 900 additional jobs from the workforce. All of this is in July only.

This is not a new problem in RI. While the rate had decreased a bit over recent months, the number of jobs lost has continued to decrease. This has been a problem for years actually. I (and others) have been saying at the start of the last two General Assembly sessions that the top focus of legislators needs to be creating an environment that encourages job growth. It encourages businesses to want to come in to RI and grow. What did the General Assembly focus on this past session? Here is an overview of the scorecard from the Journal:

• Marriage equality
• Created new bridge tolls
• Tried to create an official state appetizer
• Allowed childcare workers to organize
• Allowed those taking care of sick or disabled family paid time off
• Increased minimum wage
• Prohibited employers from initially asking about criminal records

All this while not even taking a vote on things like the master lever bill, lowering or eliminating the state sales tax, or giving any teeth back to the Ethics Panel.

What the did Assembly do to make Rhode Island more attractive to businesses to come into the state? If you’re a business owner and you see things like increasing unionization, increasing minimum wage, creating new tolls and having your hands tied on getting information about job applicants, would you want to come to Rhode Island? These things are what our General Assembly focuses on. As our business climate has fallen into the toilet for the last few years, these are the steps that the Assembly has taken to aid in creating a positive business climate. Really? Are they even trying? Then again, if we the voters are going to send them back to Smith Hill every two years, then it would seem that these are things that we approve of. We get what we vote for.