Starpoint Solutions, a staffing firm, is looking to hire 20 to 60 people for IT jobs in Rhode Island.

Starpoint Solutions is based in New York and is looking to hire up to 70 people in Rhode Island, with 20 to 60 being in the IT arena.

Five to 10 sales people and recruiters will also be hired in Providence.

As of December, Corporate Search Group, Inc. (CSG) became a part of Starpoint Solutions. Starpoint describes its business as a full-service staffing firm with a solid record of successful placements in the Finance, Accounting and Banking arena. 

According to the Starpoint Solutions site, the combination of CSG with Starpoint brings a “wider range of offerings to clients including application development; enterprise software services; and staffing solutions for Accounting and Finance, as well as IT, Administrative, Network & Infrastructure Technology, and Executive Management.”

Starpoint also has an office in Boston and wants to establish their business in Rhode Island as well.

Positions that will come available in Rhode Island in the coming months will be listed on the Starpoint website.

 The welcome news comes at a time when hiring in Rhode Island has been sluggish.

The State of Rhode Island is among those that are not seeing any relief from the current economic recession, with the state continuing to lose more jobs and Rhode Island unemployment continuing to increase.

During June, Rhode Island saw its unemployment rate increase from 12.1 percent to 12.4 percent, which is higher than the national unemployment rate at the time of 9.5 percent. The state has not seen its unemployment rate decrease since January 2007, when it went from 4.9 percent to 4.8 percent.

 More good news: the maximum amount of money that the State of Rhode Island allows people to collect in unemployment benefits each week is about to increase, according to the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training.

It was recently announced that the maximum amount for someone without dependents will increase by $18 per week, or 3.4 percent, from $528 to $546. The maximum amount for someone with five or more dependents will increase by $22 per week, or 3.3 percent, from $660 to $682.

It could take more than half a decade for Providence jobs to recover to a pre-recession level.

A new report from IHS Global Insight predicts that unemployment in the Providence-Fall River-Warwick area will not return to its pre-recession rate until after 2014. The report also predicts that Rhode Island’s annual rate of job growth will average between .5 percent and 1.1 percent between now and 2014.

Providence is one of 71 metropolitan areas that aren’t expected to return to recent employment peaks until after 2014. Other areas include Cleveland, Detroit and Los Angeles. In comparison, the Boston area is expected to return to its pre-recession employment level by the second quarter of 2014. The analysis is part of a study of 325 of the 363 metropolitan areas throughout the country.

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