As I had noted in my original post, historically it has been very unusual for there to be more than a 1.5% difference (either more or less) between the unemployment rates if Massachusetts and Rhode Island.Recently though, we have seen a historically unusual spread between Rhode Island’s high rate and Massachusetts’ far lower rate.
In fact, the latest 3.3% spread still nearly exceeds ALL spreads seen in at least 40 years.
The latest regional unemployment report shows that, in March, the Rhode Island unemployment rate declined slightly at 12.6% while the Massachusetts rate dropped to to 9.3%.
Massachusetts is still experiencing large year-over-year increases to unemployment jumping 20.78% on a year-over-year basis continuing to indicate that Mass is slogging through a period of serious job weakness.
