When fear of contagion and government measures to slow the spread of COVID-19 caused many businesses to close, more than 1.3 million Illinoisans lost their jobs. The bulk of job losses were concentrated among low-income households, minorities and women.

Seven months into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, 695,000 Illinoisans are still unemployed—three times the number of people who were looking for work before the crisis. And Illinoisans are at risk of prolonged hardship, as economic growth is expected to remain sluggish for years to come.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker held off filling top vacancies at Illinois’ unemployment office because he was planning to merge it with another state department.

Then COVID-19 upended the nation.

The mayor of Rockford is among leaders in northwest Illinois pushing back on a state mandate that shut down indoor dining in the region.

Rockford Mayor Tom McNamara said the order from Gov. J.B. Pritzker to move Region 1 into Tier 2 mitigation status with additional restrictions because of an increase in positive COVID cases amounts to a death sentence for local bars and restaurants.

While he was Chicago’s police superintendent, Eddie Johnson went on at least seven out-of-town taxpayer-funded business trips with his female bodyguard who’s now accusing him of sexual assault, according to city travel records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.

Johnson and Officer Cynthia Donald traveled to New Orleans, Peoria and Springfield between 2016 and 2019, spending thousands of dollars in taxpayer money on their trips, sometimes with adjacent hotel rooms, according to records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

A city sanitation laborer was accused Friday of taking two sick days and being AWOL for another four while actually being held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center on federal drug charges.

The Streets and Sanitation laborer was fired and placed on the “do-not-rehire” list for concealing his drug arrest.

With a global pandemic exacerbating Chicago’s pre-existing financial crisis, talk among some aldermen and policy wonks is turning to a risky financing tactic with a checkered history in Illinois: a pension obligation bond. Mayor Lori Lightfoot hasn’t rejected the idea.

Proponents say a pension obligation bond, or POB, would ease fiscal pressure as the city confronts a $1.2 billion budget gap, $31 billion in unfunded pension liabilities and a projected $756 million increase in required annual pension contributions over the next six years. Critics warn that POBs have worsened fiscal problems for other cities and raise the specter of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s ill-fated POB, which failed to solve the state’s pension problems.

Chicago Public Schools enrollment has plummeted by 15,000 students this fall, the largest single-year drop in more than two decades, according to records released by the school system Friday.

Officials called the decrease from 355,000 students to 340,000 a “crisis” that was largely driven by a significant drop in new families enrolling this fall in preschool programs and elementary school.