Little Rhodey Unemployment hits 9.3%

PAWTUCKET, R.I. (AP) -- Victoria Gaspar left her job at a bank's telephone call center more than a year ago with dreams of starting her own private cleaning business.

Her goal of becoming her own boss collapsed when her husband lost his job at a manufacturing firm. Despite registering at multiple employment agencies in two states, Gaspar has struggled to find even temporary work. Now living with her in-laws, she left a state-run job search center yesterday still desperate for a regular paycheck.

"There's just nothing out there at the moment," Gaspar said. "Now things are really tough."

Unemployment in Rhode Island reached 9.3 percent in October, its worst showing since 1983. The rate of joblessness in Rhode Island is equal to Michigan, which has been battered by a flailing auto industry. Both states have far surpassed the national unemployment rate of 6.5 percent.

Gaspar and about 15 other people spent yesterday searching through job postings a few strides from Samuel Slater's revolutionary cotton-spinning mill that launched the Industrial Revolution in 1793. Manufacturing began in this corner of New England, but it has not thrived here.

Over the past year, Rhode Island lost 3,200 manufacturing jobs, about a fifth of all job losses.

Janusz Nowinowski, 54, worked for a quarter century at a wire manufacturer in neighboring Attleboro, Mass., until he was laid off two weeks ago.

He was mainly worried about finding health insurance when his current coverage expires in January. A survivor of prostate cancer, Nowinowski needs regular checkups. The doctor's visit and related tests cost more than $2,000.

He wants to send his twin 17-year-old children to college but wonders about paying the tuition. Help-wanted advertisements have dwindled in local newspapers.

"Years ago, it was a few pages of information ... but today it is only one page or half a page," he said.

Rhode Island's economy skidded off the rails more than a year ago - long before the current meltdown on Wall Street. The state has long grappled with a declining manufacturing sector, but it was stung when a bubble in housing prices suddenly burst. Homeowners began defaulting on their mortgages and construction stopped.

Governments sometimes soften the blow from economic downturns by ramping up public spending. Rhode Island's state government, however, is hampered by massive budget deficits and has little room to maneuver.

Bryant University economist Edinaldo Tebaldi predicts unemployment will crest at 10.3 percent in 2010 before the state starts gaining jobs the following year.

In the meantime, Marlon Berroa, 21, said he is considering returning to college to gain the professional and education skills needed to find work. He has a high school equivalency degree and spent the past year working temporary jobs.

Berroa said the scarcity of work has been stressful since he has an infant daughter at home.

"I need to provide for her," he said.