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* UPDATED x1 - Unemployment rises to 9.1 percent * Quinn wants another minimum wage hike, hopes for gaming bill by January 9th

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* Gov. Pat Quinn told reporters today that he wants another increase in the state’s minimum wage, already one of the higher minimums in the nation.

“I’ve always pushed that,” Quinn said when asked about whether he’d make raising the minimum wage a priority. The governor added that the state should tie minimum wage increases to the annual cost of living. “We’ll be talking about it,” he said.

* Quinn also dodged questions today about whether he’d introduce his own gaming expansion bill, but said he feels that the General Assembly would “address” the casino issue and maybe even resolve it by the 9th of January, which would be the end of the lame duck session. The governor reiterated his support for using new gaming money to fund education programs.

* Raw audio…

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*** UPDATE *** I had to be out of the office part of the day, so I missed this one. The unemployment rate rose to 9.1 percent…

The Illinois Department of Employment Security said Thursday in its monthly report on statewide unemployment that the state saw sharp increases in the number of people employed in educational and health services jobs and in leisure and hospitality fields. In all, Illinois added a net 9,600 new jobs in August.

Construction firms and trade, transportation and utility employers shed a combined 2,500 jobs in August.

Department Director Jay Rowell says the summer rise in unemployment mirrored the summer of 2011. Last year, unemployment started dropping again in the fall.

posted by Rich Miller
Thursday, Sep 20, 12 @ 2:39 pm

Comments

Aren’t there already too many unemployed young people who need entry level minimum wage jobs?

Raising the minimum wage will increase the unemployment problem.

Comment by titan Thursday, Sep 20, 12 @ 2:45 pm
Quinn better go WAYYY back to his college note cards from his ECON 101 class.. We have HIGH unemployment for teens in minority communities, raising the minimum wage just adds another barrier to getting those kids part time jobs..

Comment by PQ's Primary Opponent Thursday, Sep 20, 12 @ 2:56 pm
===ECON 101 ===

Perhaps the most damaging class at any university anywhere in the country.

Comment by Rich Miller Thursday, Sep 20, 12 @ 3:03 pm
- Perhaps the most damaging class at any university anywhere in the country. -

Amen.

Comment by Small Town Liberal Thursday, Sep 20, 12 @ 3:05 pm
Not as damning as having PQ in the Gov mansion

Comment by PQ's Primary Opponent Thursday, Sep 20, 12 @ 3:07 pm
Bang-up timing on seeking the minimum wage increase there, Pat.

Comment by Ron Burgundy Thursday, Sep 20, 12 @ 3:29 pm
Getting more and more thankful that I managed to land a job this past Spring after my own prolonged employment drought…

Comment by TJ Thursday, Sep 20, 12 @ 3:30 pm
I work for a not-for-profit that has seen hundreds of thousands of dollars cut from our budget and delays in payments. Most of our staff make minimum wage. If the governor wants to raise the minimum wage, then revenue to pay it has to follow.

Comment by Jerome Horwitz Thursday, Sep 20, 12 @ 3:32 pm
Jerome: 1+2=’s 3: you are correct in your post! HOWEVER, dont expect PQ to come up with “3″ in his world..

Comment by PQ's Primary Opponent Thursday, Sep 20, 12 @ 3:42 pm
=== Perhaps the most damaging class at any university anywhere in the country. ===

Amen AND Hallelujah.

The argument that raising the minimum wage raises unemployment has been debunked by history.

Moreover, two-thirds of minimum wage workers are women, and 70 percent of those are over the age of 20. In fact, 40 percent are over the age of 30.

BTW, Rowell’s doing an excellent job. His quote about inaction on the federal deficit reduction package holding back job creation was fantastic.

Comment by Yellow Dog Democrat Thursday, Sep 20, 12 @ 3:42 pm
Yellow Dog: here is some simple math: Movie theatres budget X amount for summer jobs becasue of the big summer movie releases. They are all part time minimum wage jobs: the formula is. $XXX for hires at $Y per hour =’s hiring 10 employees. Change the $Y per hour to $YY per hour and guess what?? You hire LESS workers.. ECON 101

Comment by PQ's Primary Opponent Thursday, Sep 20, 12 @ 3:47 pm
Pat Quinn ALWAYS picks the wrong answer on jobs. It’s uncanny.

Comment by Crank Houston Thursday, Sep 20, 12 @ 4:04 pm
@PQ’s Primary Opponent:

People who only make $8.25 and hour can’t afford to go to the movies. That’s Reality 101.

No sensible business owner would hire 10 part-time employees at $8.25 an hour if she could actually run her business with five part-time employees. That’s Business 101.

Comment by Yellow Dog Democrat Thursday, Sep 20, 12 @ 4:05 pm
PQPP - Well, using the advanced math you undoubtedly mastered in 101, if minimum wage approached zero the number of employees would approach infinity. Methinks there might be more variables somewhere.

Comment by Small Town Liberal Thursday, Sep 20, 12 @ 4:07 pm
- Perhaps the most damaging class at any university anywhere in the country. -

So much this!

Any Econ 101 textbook in America has as much propaganda in it as the Communist Manifesto, only fewer facts.

Comment by Colossus Thursday, Sep 20, 12 @ 4:08 pm
Just think, if Quinn had run with Jason Plummer the Lt. Gov. could still be working for free, although probably still on Dad’s payroll.

Comment by Bye Partisan Thursday, Sep 20, 12 @ 4:08 pm
Whoops, mobile typo, PQPO

Comment by Small Town Liberal Thursday, Sep 20, 12 @ 4:08 pm
@PQ’s P.O.

Fortunately, economists take more classes than ECON 101. In fact, there’s an entire field of Labor Economics that studies this and the minimum wage’s effect on unemployment rate just isn’t that simple. Even in your example, a movie theater also knows that it still needs a certain amount of ticket takers and ticket sellers at minimum wage, just like McD’s knows about how many people it needs for the lunch rush. When 1 of 50 states raises the minimum wage by 10%, McD’s and the movie theater don’t all of a sudden cut their workforce by 10%, because they’d be putting more revenue at risk.

Double the minimum wage nationally? Absolutely at that point McD’s and the movie theaters push more for machines to take tickets/orders, and unemployment goes up.

Comment by Robert the Bruce Thursday, Sep 20, 12 @ 4:13 pm
Went to see a movie last Saturday night with my better half. Two cashers. one ticket taker, three working concessions, three ushers. One manager. 20 screens. Admission with a bucket of popcorn and two soda pops? $19.95.

Now THAT’S ECON 101!

Comment by Louis G. Atsaves Thursday, Sep 20, 12 @ 4:30 pm
- Admission with a bucket of popcorn and two soda pops? $19.95 -

Was that the discount theater? Last time I went tickets alone were $10 each. Fortunately I smuggled in my own “soda”.

Comment by Small Town Liberal Thursday, Sep 20, 12 @ 4:42 pm
@Louis -

Luckily for you, there was no babysitter involved. There’s another $30 right there.

Seriously, popcorn is $6 and people want to complain about raising the minimum wage.

Comment by Yellow Dog Democrat Thursday, Sep 20, 12 @ 4:58 pm
Small Town Liberal, the minimum wage IS zero, so maybe we should add that into our little calculations. And way too many people are making exactly that: zero. I have stacks of applications from many of them.

I’m written some decent length comments here about minimum wage. First, I’ll note that I worked minimum wage jobs for many years, and by the age of twenty-six opened up my own business. Today, many kids have no chance of getting in as early as I did, and they are years and years behind the curve I bent. Say whatever you want, that’s a fact.

Next, anybody who thinks small business owners (or bigger ones, for that matter) all just eat those costs has not mastered any level of Econ, whether 101 or higher, NOR any level of reality, whether 101 or higher. Instead, you get: price increases/inflation, no raises/smaller raises for mid-level employees, slower business growth, worse service (which can start a bad spiral for a small biz), and a worse business environment that makes other locales more attractive.

On that last point, I know someone will try to say no factory or job creator will be affected by a “slight” rise in the minimum wage. I wish that were true, but it all gets factored in. Illinois has plenty of positives that attract jobs, and plenty of negatives that offset that. Why keep piling on the negatives just because some people think the positives win out? Out here in the rural areas, minimum wage hits a lot harder than in the urban and suburban economies many of the legislators and governors (many with ZERO real business experience) hail from. Why are they imposing their Chicago standards on me?

Comment by Liandro Thursday, Sep 20, 12 @ 5:33 pm
Or, let me pull completely from reality 101 (actually 401, since this is well beyond the experience of so many well-meaning politicians): the no-training, first-job high school kid I hire to wrap sandwiches will get good money, and the single mom hourly manager overseeing it won’t get a raise at all, and wont leave because there isn’t a better job out there to line up. The kid makes more, while the manager who actually needs a living wage loses out. Meanwhile, I’ll be too nervous about my competitor’s prices that I wont raise mine until I’m actually losing people and have no choice.

Or I could just let my business fail. Too many biz in town have done just that…and then their zero-wage employees put in aps at my place. No one wins if that happens. That’s reality, and that’s something Pat Quinn remains oblivious about.

Comment by Liandro Thursday, Sep 20, 12 @ 5:53 pm
So Quinn wants State workers to drop two pay grades but raise the minimum wage? So much for education, experience, and perseverance.

Comment by Generation X Thursday, Sep 20, 12 @ 6:14 pm
I think I look at the minimum wage a little differently than others. I look at it through productivity. For example, I know some in black caucus have talked about the fact that in real terms the minimum wage in 1968 was over $10/hour & the unemployment rate was under 4%. What I think these liberals don’t realize is how central productivity is to wages. For instance, when I was in college I saw a stat that stated the average American worker had 6 times the income of the average Mexican worker. Why? Because the average American worker had 6 times the productivity of the average Mexican worker. Productivity has more than doubled since 1968. Today, it is reasonable to believe those making 8.25/hour are contributing more than 20/hour to the economy. Certainly, technology has increased productivity across the board including for low-skill labor. For those making minimum wage, their gross pay includes a lot less than their productivity says they’re earning. Given these kind of statistics, I also think it’s ironic that the people most likely to talk about paying people according to their contribution are on the political right. If people were paid according to their contribution, inequality would be a lot smaller than it is. The natural state of the market allows those who do what it takes to be at the top of their societies, such as CEOs in America today, become able to take a lot more than they earn.

I also wonder what degree globalization makes it difficult for governments, including state governments, to create a system where workers are paid according to their contribution. Economist John Stuart Mill’s idea of freeing trade & taxing the winners to compensate those who lose out has some appeal to me.

Comment by reformedformerlibertarian Thursday, Sep 20, 12 @ 7:17 pm
This is all part of PQ’s master plan! Raising the minimum wage so state pensioners will be able to pay their insurance premiums after he screws them out of their pensions! Who says he’s heartless and out of touch?

Comment by Old and In the Way Thursday, Sep 20, 12 @ 7:21 pm
I think state employees would be happy with raises to match the inflation rate, so why not start there dear governor. And governor, if you were to cut your wages down to $100k a year, the state could hire 3 more people at $10/hour.

Comment by Jack Thursday, Sep 20, 12 @ 8:17 pm
Just keep your focus on the “jobs creation” numbers as the full time living wage jobs with benefits are destroyed and replaced with part-time temporary min-wage food stamp subsidized jobs — Then cheer when that jobs creation number goes up like we are winning. heh..

We turn a full time job into two or more part time jobs cut the benefits and cheer the job creation like it’s meaningful and is improving our standards of living. What a joke. People need to get a clue.

This particular employment report focuses our attention on a large number of Education and Healthcare jobs created this last month. Many assume we’re talking Doctors, Nurses, etc.. but how do we know that the majority of the jobs are not diaper changers and bed pan attendants working min. wage.

We lump these professions together to obfuscate the reality of the employment situation leaving the report wide open to subjection.

Oh but surely there must of been some of those highly paid teachers in that education category right? I mean the teachers make $70k/year or more.

Nevertheless, Mayor Rahm in Chicago is working on that number of teachers as we speak. Planning school closings and education cut backs. So yeah, part-time temporary workers. Hoo-ray they created X,XXX teachers jobs in Aug.. How many of them will be cut by December?

The unemployment numbers are meaningless to the economy the way the BLS and state report them.

Comment by Oz Thursday, Sep 20, 12 @ 8:49 pm
WRT: Min wage increases destroys jobs.

Can anyone tell me where the jobs are that were created with the tax breaks? I can’t find them.

If that theater owner got a tax break they should be adding ushers or something shouldn’t they?

Comment by Oz Thursday, Sep 20, 12 @ 8:55 pm
- Yellow Dog Democrat - Thursday, Sep 20, 12 @ 3:42 pm:

=== Perhaps the most damaging class at any university anywhere in the country. ===

Amen AND Hallelujah.

The argument that raising the minimum wage raises unemployment has been debunked by history.

+++++++

Not using something like, say, government data. Numerous studies show a decline in economic activity on retailers and other minimum wage employers when the minimum wage is increased. Less economic activity means either less employment or higher consumer prices.

Comment by Cincinnatus Friday, Sep 21, 12 @ 9:01 am