— The Chicago-Joliet-Naperville area, in spite of strong job growth over the past year, had one of the highest June jobless rates at 10.4 percent.
Still, the area’s unemployment rate was lower than a year ago, according to figures released Thursday by the Illinois Department of Employment Security.
And jobs in seven of the state’s 12 metro areas were up in June over a year earlier, according to unemployment report. For the second consecutive month, the Peoria and Davenport-Moline-Rock Island areas had substantial increases.
Thursday’s report follows news last week that the statewide unemployment rate for June was 9.2 percent, a second straight monthly increase and mirroring a similar national increase.
“The economy is better today than it was a year ago — there still is room for improvement,” department spokesman Greg Rivara said. “The nation has hit this recovery pause button, seemingly.”
Comparisons between statewide and metro- and county-level unemployment rates are difficult to make. The statewide rate is seasonally adjusted to smooth out changes that follow regular, seasonal patterns and can be accurately compared from one month to the next. County and metro data are not adjusted to account for seasonal fluctuations. For that reason the more local monthly rates have to be compared to the same month in previous years for comparisons to be meaningful.
The lowest June metro unemployment rates were found in Bloomington-Normal, Davenport-Moline and Springfield, which were all at 7 percent. The Peoria area had 7.9 percent unemployment in June, the Metro East at 8.5 percent and Champaign-Urbana at 8.6.
The slowdown in Chicago reflects its diversified economy, Rivara said, which makes the city a lot like the country as a whole.
Areas that are heavily dependent on manufacturing — which continues to bounce back at a faster pace than much of the rest of the economy — continue to recover more quickly, he said.
That’s reflected in the job-growth numbers for those areas. Peoria, which is home to heavy equipment-maker Caterpillar, has seen a 2.8 percent increase in its job base over the past year, adding 5,100 jobs. And the Davenport-Moline-Rock Island area, where farm equipment-manufacturer Deere is based, has increased its job base 2.6 percent with an additional 4,700 jobs.
Job numbers were unchanged in the Danville area, while the Champaign-Urbana, Bloomington-Normal, Decatur and East St. Louis areas all lost jobs.
The decrease in the Champaign area — 3,100 fewer jobs than June 2010, a 3 percent decrease in the local job base — is due in large part to the 3,200 jobs cut over the past year at the University of Illinois.
A number of rural Illinois counties — Clark, Franklin, Hancock, Henderson, LaSalle and Marshall among them — had year-over-year decreases in unemployment of 2 percent or more in June. Many of those communities were also beneficiaries of the manufacturing recovery.
LaSalle County, for instance, is home to several mid-size manufacturers, according to the local Illinois Valley Area Chamber of Commerce.
And Fulton County in west-central Illinois is within a 45-minute drive of Peoria, where a significant minority of the county’s residents commute for work, said Mark Rothert, executive director of the Spoon River Partnership for Economic Development.
The county also has its own mini boom in construction and manufacturing thanks to an Indiana company, Cook Medical, he said.
“They’ve built a medical manufacturing plant that went operational in 2010,” he said. “They’re building a second plant right now.”
The first facility employs 50 with the capacity to hire up to 300, and the second will employ 30 to 50, Rothert said.
The highest county-level jobless rate was 12.9 percent in Alexander County, the rural county at Illinois’ southern extreme that often has the state’s highest unemployment. That rate was slightly higher than a year earlier.
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