Despite statewide job gains in June, eight of Illinois’ metro areas lost jobs for the month. Most areas still haven’t recovered to pre-pandemic job levels.
Illinois’ metro areas already face unemployment problems, with some of the nation’s worst rates. They could be hit harder by a recession than other places in the nation.
Despite a full year of job gains, all Illinois metropolitan areas are missing jobs since the pandemic began and the recovery stalled. While May brought job gains statewide, only eight metro areas saw gains while seven saw losses.
Two bills on Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s desk would spend $20 million to add license plate monitoring cameras to 6,600 miles of highways in 22 counties. Civil rights groups fret about abuse. Illinois State Police can’t say they increase safety.
Because Illinois state lawmakers waited until the last minute to pass a budget, no one noticed multiple errors that could have halted about half of the state’s spending until a month before the fiscal year ended. Haste makes waste of taxpayer dollars.
Chicago’s $1.15 billion projected budget gap is the latest in a decades-long string of structural deficits. Making Chicago’s high taxes worse is not the solution.