Unemployment woes: regional numbers show residents of Illinois cities still struggling to find work

by Ted Dabrowski Illinois has the nation’s second-worst unemployment rate. At 9.5 percent, it’s two percentage points higher than the national average of 7.5 percent. That gap translates into lost opportunities and struggle for the many Illinoisans who wish to be gainfully employed. Nearly 130,000 more Illinoisans could be working today if Illinois employed people at the...

by Ted Dabrowski

Illinois has the nation’s second-worst unemployment rate. At 9.5 percent, it’s two percentage points higher than the national average of 7.5 percent.

That gap translates into lost opportunities and struggle for the many Illinoisans who wish to be gainfully employed. Nearly 130,000 more Illinoisans could be working today if Illinois employed people at the same rate as the national average.

But as bad as Illinois’s unemployment might be, it hides the deeper pain that many of the areas outside Chicago feel.

A look at the unemployment of Illinois’ Metropolitan Statistical Areas, or MSAs, as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows several regions experiencing joblessness that exceeds 10 percent.

The Decatur and Rockford MSAs have unemployment rates of 11.8 percent. Kankakee-Bradley, 11.7 percent. Danville, 10.8 percent.

And it gets worse if you look at individual cities. Many have unemployment rates exceeding 12, 13 or 14 percent.

In Joliet, nearly 10,000 of the city’s 75,000-person labor force can’t find work. That’s more than 13 percent.

Sadly, behind every statistic is a person or family that is struggling to make ends meet and to create a better future for themselves and their families.

If they can’t find opportunities in Illinois, they’ll look elsewhere, just as many have already done. Illinois has already lost nearly one person every 10 minutes in the past 15 years.

There is hope, but the state will need to dramatically overturn the failed policies it has been following over the past decade. The Illinois Policy Institute has laid out a plan to do just that. Change won’t be easy, but convincing people to come back to Illinois will be even harder under the failing status quo.