By Paul Merrion
May 12, 2014
Illinois always has been one of the last states to suffer from a recession and one of the last states to recover, but this is getting ridiculous.
Nearly five years after the recession ended nationwide, the Illinois unemployment rate is 8.4 percent, third worst in the nation. When Gov. Pat Quinn took office in January 2009, the recession had been underway for a year and unemployment stood at 8.0 percent, just slightly above the national average.
Since then, the Illinois economy has sputtered, with unemployment peaking at 11.4 percent before slowly dropping. The rate is now almost 2 percentage points above the national average.
The nagging question—and one that might determine the outcome of this year’s governor’s race—is why?
Illinois’ stubbornly high unemployment is the result of several factors, including the severity of the state’s housing slump, which has badly hurt the construction industry. The decades-long decline in manufacturing has continued, while neighboring states like Indiana and Michigan have a larger share of the rapidly improving auto industry, the only part of the sector that is rebounding. Meanwhile, jobs in retailing and financial activities in Illinois also continued to decline here while the rest of the nation recovered.