The Illinois Department of Employment Security announced Monday (March 11, 2019) that the unemployment rate was 4.3 percent in January, unchanged from December, and nonfarm payrolls increased by 24,000 jobs over the previous month, based on preliminary data provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Job growth was strong during the November to January period, posting an average monthly increase of 12,500 jobs, an improvement over the prior month when the three-month average change was an increase of 9,400 jobs.

The Illinois total jobs level has reached a new record mark each month since October 2018.

“We’re pleased to see strong job growth in January and look forward to building on this foundation in the months to come,” said Deputy Gov. Dan Hynes.

In January, the three industry sectors with the largest over-the-month gains in employment were Trade, Transportation and Utilities (+9,300), Construction (+5,800) and Manufacturing (+4,200).

Over-the-year, nonfarm payroll employment increased by 78,000 jobs, with the largest gains in these industry sectors in January: Education and Health Services (+16,900), Trade, Transportation and Utilities (+15,400) and Leisure and Hospitality (+11,600).

Information was down 2,000 jobs from the previous year and was the only industry sector to report an over-the-year decline. Illinois nonfarm payrolls were up 1.3 percent over-the-year as compared to the nation’s 1.9 percent over-the-year gain in January.

The state’s unemployment rate is +0.3 percentage points higher than the national unemployment rate reported for January 2019, which rose to 4.0 percent. The Illinois unemployment rate is down -0.1 percentage points from a year ago, when it was 4.4 percent.

The number of unemployed workers increased 1.4 percent from the prior month to 280,500 but down 2.7 percent over the same month for the prior year. The labor force was up slightly (+0.1 percent) over-the-month but down 0.1 percent over the year. The unemployment rate identifies those individuals who are out of work and are seeking employment.

An individual who exhausts or is ineligible for benefits is still reflected in the unemployment rate if they actively seek work.

Find a Job

To help connect jobseekers to employers who are hiring, IDES’ maintains the state’s largest job search engine, IllinoisJoblink.com, which recently showed 61,641 posted resumes with 95,196 jobs available.

SOURCE: state of Illinois news release