Illinois unemployment rates jumps to 7.3%

[orleans]

Illinois employers eliminated a total of 9,700 jobs statewide during the month of July, state officials said today, pushing the Illinois unemployment rate leaped from 6.8 percent to 7.3 percent -- the state's highest jobless level in almost 15 years.

The national unemployment rate was 5.7 percent.

The Illinois Department of Employment Security said a total of 5,979,600 people were on the payroll last month, down from the 5,989,300 employed in June.

The number of people without a job surged to 491,300, IDES said. In the three months beginning in May, the number of unemployed workers in Illinois has soared by 121,900. During that period the state's unemployment rate, which has been moving up faster than the national rate, rose a total of 1.9 percentage points. Just a year ago, Illinois unemployment stood at 5.1 percent.

"With the number of unemployed individuals increasing by one-third since April, the effects of national economic turmoil on the Illinois job market are painstakingly clear," said IDES Director James P. Sledge.

The hardest-hit sector in July was the "professional and business services" group, which shed 3,200 jobs, falling to 876,800.

Trade, transportation and utilities employment dropped by 2,000 to 1,219,200; and construction employment dropped 1,100 to 260,900.

Illinois lost 2,200 jobs in the leisure and hospitality sector, where employment dropped to 530,200.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chicago-illinois-unemployment-aug14,0,5791769.story

[DollyM]

1. I know, we are two of those unemployed . . .

My husband has been out of work for 10 months and has been unable to find a job. I have a small business but it won't support a family so I have been looking also but to no avail. A year ago, my husband was at least getting interviews, now we send out resumes and get nothing, not even a response. The unemployment rate in our southern Illinois county is nearly 9 percent. Farther south it is 11 percent. My husband has two months of unemployment left due to the extention then I don't know what we are going to do. We both have Master's degrees but alot of good it does. What we are finding is that employers are hiring either people fairly new out of college who will work for nothing or retired people who will work for nothing. My husband is 55 so he is too young to retire and now that we have cashed in nearly all our retirment savings, that wouldn't be an option anyway. I have never seen it this bad when two well educated and experienced people can not find jobs for anything.