Seventeen years have passed
since 1998, but one thing has barely changed since then: the number of jobs in
Illinois.
A new report this week found
that total nonfarm employment in Illinois is currently about 5.91 million – the
same as it was in July of 1998.
By comparison, Illinois’s
neighbors have fared much better even with smaller populations. Over the same
time period, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, Iowa gained
128,000 jobs, Indiana gained 150,000, and Wisconsin grew by more than 188,000 –
all while Illinois remained flat.
In the past few months,
Illinois’s economy has shown troubling signs of heading in the wrong direction.
In the last month alone, Illinois lost nearly 7,000 jobs, including 1,800
manufacturing jobs. The state has lost manufacturing jobs in eight of nine
months so far this year.
Sadly, the impact isn’t going
to take long to see.
According
to the latest data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), on average,
Illinois is losing one person and $50,000 of taxable income every seven
minutes.
Republicans have long argued
that a struggling economy leads to the loss of residents and businesses and therefore, loss in tax revenue – and only
structural reform of the broken system is going to turn it around and help solve the state’s budget woes.