PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - Rhode Island’s slow recovery from the economic shutdown prompted by the coronavirus continued last month as the state’s unemployment rate dropped to 11.2% and the economy added nearly 14,000 jobs, the state Department of Labor and Training said Thursday.
The July unemployment rate was down 1.4 percentage points from the revised June rate of 12.6%.
The rate in July 2019 was 3.6%.
The national unemployment rate was 10.2% in July, down from 11.1% the previous month.
With the addition of 13,800 jobs in July, the state has recovered more than half of the 98,100 jobs lost in March and April when the economic shutdown meant to control the spread of the virus took effect, the department said.
The accommodation and food services sector accounted for about 4,000 of the jobs added July as full service and limited-service restaurants steadily continued to add employment to their payrolls, the department said.
The health care and social assistance sector, which includes dentist’s offices, added about 1,600 jobs in the month.
The arts, entertainment and recreation sector, including fitness centers and golf courses, also added jobs.
Due to unprecedented pandemic-related employment declines in March and April, nearly all employment sectors reported year-over-year declines in July, the department said.
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NEW CASES
There have been 62 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus and one new coronavirus-related death in the state, according to the latest data from the state Department of Health released Thursday.
The number of people in the state’s hospitals as of Tuesday, the latest day for which the information was available, was 84, up slightly from the previous day. Eight of those patients were in intensive care.
There have now been nearly 20,900 confirmed cases and 1,028 COVID-19-related deaths in the state.
The 7-day rolling average of daily new cases in Rhode Island decreased in the past two weeks from 97.29 per day on Aug. 5 to 95.14 new cases per day on Wednesday, according to the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
The 7-day rolling average of the positivity rate in Rhode Island has risen slightly over the past two weeks from 2.32% on Aug. 5 to 2.37% on Thursday, according to Johns Hopkins.
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