With Peoria and downstate reeling, the Caterpillar move comes at a time of persistent disinvestment in Illinois manufacturing.

The Illinois Department of Employment Security’s newly released jobs report shows Illinois’ 1,700 jobs gained in November were concentrated in white-collar service sectors, and that blue-collar fields, such as manufacturing, lost jobs.

Workers’ compensation is a significant cost to Illinois taxpayers and drains scarce tax dollars from government coffers. Political and business leaders often view workers’ compensation as a costly regulation that affects private-sector investment and employment in Illinois.[1] This description is accurate yet incomplete. The same heavy costs imposed on private-sector employers[2] are also imposed on...

Since the beginning of 2015, Illinois has lost 14,100 manufacturing jobs.

New IDES data show that Illinois’ overall jobs growth was weak for October. While the greater Chicago area had tepid jobs growth over the year, the rest of the state lost jobs.

Since the end of the recession, only 5 out of Illinois’ 13 metro areas – Carbondale-Marion, Chicago, Kankakee, Lake County-Kenosha County and Springfield – have recovered all the private-sector jobs lost from the Great Recession.

More than 6,000 Illinois manufacturing jobs disappeared in 2015.