Dec. 23--Nearly all of Illinois' metro areas saw their unemployment rates creep up in November compared to a year earlier, with the Chicago metro area alone in reporting an improvement.
Year-over-year unemployment rates increased in 12 metro areas in November, according to data released Wednesday by the Illinois Department of Employment Security and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Peoria saw one of the biggest jumps, to 7.1 percent unemployment from 6.3 percent last year. One metro area, Davenport-Moline-Rock Island, stayed flat at 5.8 percent.
More troubling than the increase in unemployment rates is "Illinois' extremely low employment growth rate this past year," Jeff Mays, director of IDES, said in a news release. "Out of 102 counties in Illinois, 96 remain below their pre-recession 2007 peak employment levels."
The Chicago-Naperville-Arlington Heights metro area was alone in seeing its unemployment rate decline, to 5.2 percent in November from 5.8 percent a year earlier, with the addition of 47,000 jobs. Most of the job gains were in professional and business services, education and health services, and construction. Manufacturing lost the most jobs.
In the city of Chicago itself, unemployment fell to 5.8 percent from 6.5 percent. Among cities with more than 100,000 people, the unemployment rate dropped in all except Aurora, where it was flat at 5.8 percent.
Illinois has lagged the rest of the nation in the economic recovery. The national unemployment rate in November was 5 percent.
aelejalderuiz@tribpub.com
