Every metro area in Illinois saw its unemployment rate drop in August compared with a year before and nearly all had an increase in jobs, according to preliminary data released Thursday by the Illinois Department of Employment Security.
Still, state officials said job growth fell short of the national pace and unemployment remains too high.
“While it is encouraging that unemployment rates declined from last year, most areas in Illinois are still higher than the national average,” said IDES Director Jeff Mays.
Unemployment in the Chicago-Naperville-Arlington Heights metro division dropped to 5.4 percent in August from 5.9 percent a year before. The last time an August had such low unemployment was in 2007, just before the Great Recession, when the rate was 5.1 percent.
By comparison, the nonseasonally adjusted national unemployment rate this August was 4.5 percent. The unadjusted numbers do not take into account seasonal fluctuations stemming from holidays or weather and so cannot be compared month to month.
Other areas in Illinois had more drastic unemployment declines. The Bloomington metro area’s unemployment rate plunged to 4.2 percent from 5.3 percent. Peoria, Kankakee and the St. Louis area also had full percentage-point drops.
Unemployment figures measure people who are not working but looking for work.
The Chicago metro area added 18,700 jobs over the year, a growth rate of 0.5 percent, below the national average of 1.4 percent. Most of its job gains were in financial activities, professional-business services, leisure-hospitality and transportation-warehousing-utilities. They were partially offset by job losses in retail trade, government and manufacturing.
The greatest pace of job growth was in the Carbondale-Marion metro area, which added 1,300 jobs over the year, a rate of 2.3 percent. The Bloomington and Lake metro areas also saw high job growth.
Two of the 14 metro areas experienced job losses. In Danville, a job loss of 500 was a 1.8 percent decline. Elgin lost 2,400 manufacturing jobs.
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