PHOTO: Jason Richard, UnsplashJob losses are starting to mount in Rhode Island, and these numbers do not include the impact of federal jobs that may be impacted by the Trump administration's DOGE cuts.
Leading employers have been cutting and appear to be continuing to slash jobs.
CVS over the last year has announced thousands of layoffs across the country and hundreds have hit here in Rhode Island. Since October, CVS has notified the Rhode Island Department of Labor of more than 1,500 layoffs.
Then, the cutting at Hasbro has been non-stop and on their most recent investor call, the company said it is still looking for $250 million more in cost savings.
At the Providence Journal, more than 130 will lose their jobs this month with the closure of the printing press in Providence and the shift of the newspaper’s printing to New Jersey. With the cuts, the paper, who once claimed upwards of 1,000 employees, now employs just a few dozen in Rhode Island.
UNFI, the supermarket supply company headquartered in Rhode Island, laid off more than 120 in November.
And, more than 200 Rhode Islanders who worked in East Providence for Ennovi Advanced Mobility Solutions, a company owned by Blackstone were laid off last summer. Blackstone’s CEO is billionaire Newport summer resident Stephen Schwarzman. Those are just the numbers that are publicly reported.
RIDLT, which historically publishes the jobs numbers in the third week of each month for the previous month, will not publish the January numbers until next week.
The most recent numbers released by RIDLT were for December, and they showed Rhode Island's unemployment rate of 4.6%—significantly higher than the countrywide rate of 4.0%.
In just the past year under McKee, from December 2023 to December 2024, the unemployment rate increased 43% from 3.2% to 4.6%.
Warning Signs for Rhode Island
URI Economist Leonard Lardaro wrote in February, citing the December job numbers for Rhode Island:
"Looking further ‘below the hood’ of the job market, 'New Claims for Unemployment Insurance,' which reflects layoffs and is a leading labor market indicator, has risen monthly since August, while not having a defined trend on an annual basis. On the other end of the spectrum, 'Benefit Exhaustions,' which reflect long-term unemployment, rose on an annual basis for every month of 2024, ending the year with two consecutive months of forty-plus percent rises."
UPDATED: 10:08 AM
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