SPRINGFIELD – The US GDP for the second quarter was way up to 4.1 percent, federal government sources reported Thursday. That raised the question for Illinois Review Twitter follower Gary Frank, who asked "How's Illinois doing?"
Fair question, we thought – and Illinois News Network was on the answer already, we found. Illinois' unemployment rate is at 4.3 percent, above the 4.0 national average, but there's good news as people are getting jobs in metropolitan areas and those opportunities move towards central and southern parts of the state.
Here's what INN reports concerning Illinois' unemployment climate reported by the Illinois Department of Employment Security:
The latest job numbers show the national economy appears to be starting to pull central and southern Illinois’ employment figures up, but the unemployment rate still ticked up in several cities across the state.
The Illinois Department of Employment Security released June’s local unemployment numbers Thursday. While a number of the state’s metropolitan areas saw their unemployment rate increase, IDES spokesman Bob Gough said it was due to increases in the workforce, especially in metropolitan areas outside of the Chicago area.
“Any of the growth we had seen in the previous year was mostly north of I-80,” he said. “We’ve really begun to see a lot of spread out statewide growth now.”
