WASHINGTON: linois’ unemployment rate inched up to 5.6 percent in October, and employers added more than 2,200 jobs to their payrolls, mostly in professional and business services, according to preliminary data released Thursday by the state Department of Employment Security. Last month’s unemployment rate was down from the 5.9 percent recorded a year ago. Illinois remains about 32,500 jobs short of its peak employment level reached in September 2000. Professional and business services topped the list last month as the sector with the largest job gains, adding more than 4,800 jobs. The construction sector told a different story, as payrolls decreased by 3,300 jobs in October.
State officials say that uneven recovery among sectors is one reason why Illinois’ employment rate continues to run higher than the national average, which last month shrank to 4.9 percent. “Illinois continues to recover at a slower rate than the rest of the nation, as witnessed by the meager payroll gains in October,” Employment Security Director Jeff Mays said in a news release. “The recovery has been uneven among the various sectors as Illinois still lags in manufacturing, construction and financial activities, as well as trade, transportation and utilities.”
Although the manufacturing sector added 1,600 new jobs last month, the bigger picture shows that Illinois still is hemorrhaging manufacturing jobs, state officials say. Illinois has lost 10,000 manufacturing jobs in the last year, as companies move across the border to surrounding states, seeking lower costs. There were 366,600 unemployed people in Illinois in October, defined as people out of work and looking for work, up 1.7 percent from September, but down 5.3 percent from October 2015. At its peak after the Great Recession, the number of unemployed people in the state reached 740,000 in January 2010.
