Illinois continues to lag neighboring states in job growth; U.S. grew at twice the rate of Illinois
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CHICAGO—The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics yesterday released 2015 Benchmarked jobs data for all states and Washington, DC showing Illinois continues to lag behind neighboring states in terms of job growth. Year-to-year growth in Illinois continues to be anemic. Illinois is one of only three states that has never surpassed its 2000 peak employment levels and remains 80,000 jobs short.
With the newly released BLS Benchmarked jobs data, the impact of the revisions can be seen on a state-by-state basis, allowing a comparison of Illinois’ growth rate versus every other state in the country. Nationally with these BLS benchmarked data, 38 other states grew faster than Illinois in 2015. Midwestern states growing faster than Illinois with these revised numbers were Kentucky, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Minnesota, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Iowa, and South Dakota.
While BLS data showed that Illinois gained 52,600 jobs in 2015 increasing the Illinois job growth rate from 0% to 0.9% for 2015, the US as a whole grew 1.8% with the benchmarked data, or twice the rate of Illinois. This BLS revised data can be seen on the BLS website at www.BLS.gov.
About IDES
IDES encourages employment by connecting employers to jobseekers, provides unemployment insurance benefits to eligible individuals, produces labor market data and protects taxpayers from unemployment insurance fraud. Visit the Department’s website atwww.ides.illinois.gov for more information.
