Unemployment on the rise in Illinois metropolitan areas

Illinois metropolitan areas unemployment rates increased from 4.7 percent to 5.4 percent in April 2008, which is higher than the national average of 4.8 percent.

In the Chicago-Naperville-Joliet metro area changes in unemployment figures were virtually identical to those of the entire state.

Bureau of Labor Statistics released the April Metropolitan Area Employment and Unemployment rates Wednesday and announced that 70 percent of the 369 U.S. metropolitan areas reported higher unemployment. A decrease in unemployment was reported in 22 percent of metro areas and the remainder was unchanged.

Crissy Mancini, director of budget and policy analysis at the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, a Chicago-based nonprofit research and advocacy think tank, said it’s just the continuation of an ongoing trend in Illinois.

Illinois has lost 26 percent of its manufacturing jobs since 1990, according to the Center. “In Illinois wages have decreased over the last decade,” Mancini said, “Metro areas have a lot of service industry jobs and, as the price of doing business increases, places like restaurants have to do something to meet their bottom line.”

Every metro area in Illinois reported an increase in civilian labor force unemployment according to the BLS preliminary numbers for April 2008, compared with the year-ago period. The largest hike was 1.7 percentage points in Rockford, Ill., from 5.5 percent to 7.2 percent. In that city of 180,000, nearly 5,000 more people joined the ranks of the unemployed.

Illinois is feeling the pinch because of its industrial-based economy, John Challenger, CEO of the Chicago-based outplacement company Challenger, Grey & Christmas Inc. said in an interview Wednesday.

“The economy is worsening and Chicago is not immune to that,” Challenger said.