Illinois has finally recovered from the job losses suffered during the Great Recession, and its workforce continues to grow. But the state’s unemployment rate is also increasing, signaling that while the economy is recovering, it is still unable to meet the demands of a growing number of job seekers.

A day after the Illinois Department of Employment Security reported that Illinois’ workforce shrank by 19,000 people in August, driving Illinois’ labor-force participation rate to a new 35-year low, new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics confirms the severity of the state’s labor-force dropout crisis. The labor-force participation rate measures the share of Illinois’...