A half million jobs lost across state
IDES reports all metro areas have suffered year to year in pandemic; Chicago, Rockford, Decatur hardest hit
Merchant Street in Decatur, one of the metropolitan areas hardest hit year to year in unemployment — most of it no doubt due to the pandemic. (Wikimedia Commons/J. Pinta)
By Ted Cox
Almost a half million jobs have been lost across the state from this time last year, with all metropolitan areas suffering declines in employment due to the pandemic, according to the latest breakdown from the Illinois Department of Employment Security.
IDES issued a news release Thursday analyzing the July unemployment rate for the state, set at 11.3 percent last week. The findings were stunning, with the economic fallout from COVID-19 felt across the state in all 14 metropolitan areas. The rise in the unemployment rate from 4.2 percent last July reflected the loss of 497,600 nonfarm jobs.
The decline was sharpest in Chicago and the suburbs, where unemployment has risen to 12.6 percent from 4.1 percent a year ago, reflecting the loss of more than 300,000 jobs. But Rockford, which was already seeing high unemployment a year ago, saw its rate rise from 6.7 percent to 13.8 percent, with a drop of 12,000 jobs. Decatur, Elgin, and Peoria all saw increases of six percentage points or more, with Decatur highest of the three at 12 percent.
As in previous months, the state’s major college towns fared the best relatively. Champaign-Urbana, home to the University of Illinois, saw a rise of just 3.7 percentage points year to year to an unemployment rate of 7.9 percent, while Bloomington-Normal, home of Illinois State, saw its rate rise 3.9 points to 8 percent.
IDES didn’t sugarcoat it, however, reporting that “the number of nonfarm jobs decreased over the year in July in all 14 Illinois metropolitan areas, with five metro areas at record low payrolls” and four recording record highs for the unemployment rate dating back 30 years, when the methodology last changed.
The economic damage was extensive and widespread, as “no industry sector saw job gains in a majority of metro areas.”
Reflecting the general economic vitality of college towns, Bloomington-Normal was one of the four metro areas reporting record highs for the July unemployment rate going back to 1990, joined by Chicago, the Quad Cities, and Springfield (both the last two at 9.1 percent). The five metro areas with record low July employment figures going back to 1990 included Danville, Decatur, Peoria, Springfield, and Metro East.
It should be pointed out that the state added 100,000 jobs in July in the economic recovery from the pandemic shutdown in continuing to lower the unemployment rate from the peak of 17.2 percent recorded in April. “As the state continues to monitor the safety of economic reopening, IDES is committed to continuing to help those who need services,” said IDES Acting Director Kristin Richards. “With the support of the Pritzker administration, the department is prepared to support working families who continue to be affected by this pandemic.”
Things have been worse in Illinois, but not across the nation — dating back to the Great Depression. IDES reported that the record high unemployment for July in Illinois was 11.5 percent, set in 1983 during the Reagan administration’s recession. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics set the national unemployment rate for July — not adjusted for seasonal variations — at 10.5 percent, the highest ever recorded in the month dating back to 1948, when the bureau began calculating it. The unemployment rate before that was generally an estimate, peaking at 25 percent in the Great Depression.