Providence Employment Recovery Ranks Among Worst in U.S.

Providence Employment Recovery Ranks Among Worst in U.S.

A new report on how fast cities are recovering jobs from the pandemic finds that Providence is among the worst in the country.

Providence ranks 139 out of 180 cities tracked.

And while some New England cities ranked even worse than Providence, four ranked in the top 20 for recovery.

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Those cities in New England that have recovered the fastest are in the northern part of New England.

Warwick, RI comes in at #92, significantly ahead of Providence.

Boston ranks just slightly ahead of Providence at #135.

Worcester at #152, New Haven #166, and Bridgeport at #177 all finished in the bottom 30.

 

SEE THE INTERACTIVE MAP BELOW TO HOW EACH CITY RANKS

"The COVID-19 pandemic was disastrous for U.S. employment, but the job market is showing signs of healing due to states reopening. The national unemployment rate is currently at 6%, which is 59% lower than the peak of 14.7% during the height of the pandemic. The country has been able to make a lot of progress thanks to the distribution of the vaccine, but it will likely take a long time for the unemployment rate to return to the historic low it experienced prior to the coronavirus crisis. Some cities’ jobs have weathered the storm better than others, though," said the report from WalletHub.

In order to identify where workers have been most affected by the coronavirus pandemic, WalletHub compared 180 cities based on four key metrics. We looked at the change in each city’s unemployment during the latest month for which we have data (March 2021) compared to March 2019, March 2020 and January 2020. We also considered each city’s overall unemployment rate.

Note that WalletHub's report relies on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which disclosed that it misclassified some workers on temporary layoffs as “absent from work because of other reasons” rather than “unemployed.”

Therefore, the real unemployment rate in March may be around 7% higher than reported. For this reason, WalletHub has included two columns for the unemployment rate in the table below, one with the officially reported unemployment rate and one with the “adjusted” rate after accounting for the misclassification.