The other day a news item stating that Illinois’s unemployment rate had dropped to 5.9% came across my desk. I didn’t comment on it because I suspected there was more to the story. There was:
The Illinois Department of Employment Security released last month’s jobs numbers Thursday. The statewide unemployment rate dropped from 6.9 percent in June 2014 to 5.9 percent last month.
The good news, however, is tempered by data showing that since January 2015 the state’s labor force has decreased by 33,600 workers, and the number of Illinois residents employed has dropped by 17,600. Based on the labor force constriction data, IDES analysts estimate that the number of jobs in Illinois won’t reach prerecession levels until at least September 2016.
Illinois shed 7,500 nonfarm payroll jobs in June, and the state’s jobless rate is still higher than the national rate, which came in at 5.3 percent last month.
IDES said a shrinking workforce must be considered when looking at jobless numbers.
“The drop in the number of unemployed Illinois residents since the beginning of this year is not entirely attributable to people finding jobs, rather to people leaving Illinois’ workforce altogether,†IDES Director Jeff Mays said.
or, in other words, our diligent political leaders in Illinois won’t rest until the last job is wrung out of the Illinois economy.
The unanswered questions are a) what is the state’s labor force participation rate?, b) what would Illinois’s unemployment rate be if the LFPR had remained the same?, and c) what is Illinois’s present population?
As it turns out, the answer to the first question is available:
The state’s workforce has decreased by 33,600 since the start of the year, with 8,300 disappearing from the workforce in June alone, which pushed the labor force participation rate to a new low of 64.4 percent–the lowest it has been since February of 1978.
Also, see the graph at the linked post. It’s been 37 years since the LFPR has been this low in Illinois. If you cast your mind back, Baby Boomers had just started entering the workforce and women were still getting into the workforce in numbers. And it’s still going down.
I don’t think that our political leaders have come to terms with the realities of our situation. You can’t support the same size (or larger) government as we did eight years ago. Trying to maintain the government at the same (or larger) size with less economic activity just pushes economic activity lower.
It genuinely concerns me that every solution to our economic problems proposed by our political leaders whether at the state, county, or local level will reduce economic activity. That doesn’t sound like the right direction to me.
