About 1 in 5 RI workers 'underemployed'

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) - More than five years after the state began to lose jobs, the evidence keeps piling up that the state's job market remains severely out of whack.

Rhode Island's "underemployment" rate averaged 18.9% in the 12 months ended June 30, according to newly released U.S. Labor Department data. That means over the past year nearly one in five workers in Rhode Island wanted a full-time job but couldn't find one.

The state's underemployment rate was third-highest in the country, after Nevada (22.1%) and California (20.3%).

The underemployment rate - formally known as the "U-6" rate for its official data classification name - counts all unemployed workers who are still looking for a job, as the official rate does, but then adds all the people who are stuck working part-time because they can't find a full-time job. It's reported as a 12-month moving average, not a monthly statistic.

As the recession took hold, Rhode Island's underemployment rate more than doubled from 8.3% in December 2007 to 19.4% in March 2010, and it's now been higher than 18% for three years.

"I don't know what the deal is there, but the state economy does not look like it's sharing in the national upturn," Dean Baker, an economist who is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, told WPRI.com in March.

The Labor Department has six different unemployment measures, and in another troubling sign, officials said Rhode Island was the only state in the nation where each of those six measurements got worse over the past year.

Rhode Island's regular unemployment rate averaged 11.2% in the year ended June 30, 2012, tied with California for second-highest; Nevada topped the list at 12.3%. The regular monthly unemployment rate was 10.9% in June, the Labor Department said.

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi's Notes blog. Follow him on Twitter: @tednesi