The latest job numbers show Illinois continues struggling to recover pandemic job losses, a bad sign for its lagging economy as recession fears rise.

Illinois’ lagging pandemic recovery continued across its cities in July. Only 1 metropolitan area has recovered from the pandemic.

Only Bloomington has recouped early 2020 job losses, which is bad news for Illinois’ lagging economy as recession fears increase.

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.

Illinois’ overall job numbers continue to rise, but the recovery is spotty. Over half of the metropolitan areas failed to add jobs in April.

Illinois is steadily adding jobs lost during the COVID-19 economic downturn, but despite 10 months of gains the state recovery lags the nation. Some metropolitan areas are far behind where they were.

Illinois posted job growth of 19,600 in February, with bigger payrolls in 10 of 14 Illinois-based metropolitan areas.

Illinois’ record population decline affected virtually all of the state’s largest cities.

Bloomington is the only metro area to recover jobs lost during the COVID-19 pandemic and statewide mandated shutdowns. Illinois is still missing 200,100 jobs as of January 2020.

New census data reveals that for a second year, all 10 metro areas based primarily in Illinois experienced population decline.