From today’s Providence Journal: The end of the “Great Recession” is in sight, but economic recovery in Rhode Island will lag behind its New England neighbors and the rest of the nation, according to Andres Carbacho-Burgos, an economist with Moody’s Economy.com.
“Rhode Island, like the rest of the United States, is emerging from the Great Recession,” he said to a collection of the state’s top budget officials Wednesday morning, describing the Ocean State’s economic problems as the “second-worst recession in Rhode Island History in terms of proportional job losses.” Only 1991 was worse.
Rhode Island’s rate of recovery, however, will be the slowest since the Great Depression, Carbacho-Burgos said, downgrading his projections of six months ago.
The news was not altogether unexpected, but suggests that state budget deficits — and pressure on lawmakers to cut programs and raise taxes — will continue to grow in the coming months.
