* Press release…

The Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES) announced today that the unemployment rate fell -0.3 percentage point to 5.7 percent, while nonfarm payrolls increased by +19,500 in November, based on preliminary data provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and released by IDES. The preliminary report for October monthly payrolls was revised from +40,900 to +42,000 jobs. The October unemployment rate was unchanged from the preliminary report, remaining at 6.0 percent. […]

In November, the three industry sectors with the largest over-the-month gains in employment were: Leisure and Hospitality (+8,200), Trade, Transportation and Utilities (+8,200), and Construction (+3,800). The industry sectors that reported monthly payroll declines were: Professional and Business Services (-5,500), Other Services (-200), and Mining (-100). […]

The state’s unemployment rate was +1.5 percentage points higher than the national unemployment rate reported for November, which was 4.2 percent, down -0.4 percentage point from the previous month. The Illinois unemployment rate was down -2.4 percentage points from a year ago when it was at 8.1 percent.

I couldn’t pull up details of the December, 2019 report because they’ve disappeared from the Internet, so I used November of 2019 instead. The state is down about 300K jobs since that point in 2019. A third of that loss has been in the Leisure and Hospitality field. We’re pretty reliant on tourism and conventions and those two things aren’t doing well.

The Professional and Business Services segment is down about 40K, Educational and Health Services is down about 55K, Government is off 53K and Manufacturing is down about 44K.