Quote:
Originally Posted by marothisu
Illinois dipped in unemployment rate again and is at 4.7% now. It is now lower than California, Texas, Arizona, etc. Now tied for 32nd highest unemployment rate with North Carolina, Michigan, Nevada and Tennessee. Up a few places from March when it was 36th. I think a year ago it might have been around 47th or 48th.
The labor force population is down 21,000 since January but unemployment is down over 67,000 people which means the rate is dipping not only because of some unemployed people leaving the state. Employment is up over 50K people. If the labor force would have stayed the same with employment going up that much then we'd be looking at 4.9% or 5% unemployment which would still be a good decrease in the matter of a few months. The interesting thing I find is that Texas and every major city within Texas is rising in unemployment rate but their labor force and employment numbers are rising too which means people who are unemployed may be moving there - some from Illinois? That would be interesting to see.
It'll be interesting to see where Chicago is at now when the data is released in 1.5 weeks.
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I fly to Texas a lot for work and I come across many people visiting family that recently moved there from the South or Westside of Chicago. I am told family members moved there looking for a better living situation (lower crime) but did not necessarily have a job lined up. In fact, my last two uber drivers in Houston and Las Vegas were former Chicagoans from the Southside (Roseland and Chatham) and uber is their only source of income. I personally believe we will see a slight pick up in unemployment as this trend continues. If Texas employment picks up, it will mostly be technical jobs in Oil & Gas to support the growth of LNG exports.
I hope Rauner and Rahm aggressively pursue the next Tesla Gigafactory. Illinois has some of the lowest energy prices in the entire United States. It will be a battle between Michigan, Illinois and Indiana for the Midwest location.