Job losses are on the rise due to the pandemic. | Pixabay
Job losses are on the rise due to the pandemic. | Pixabay
Jobs in the cities of Peoria and Bloomington are shrinking in relation to the Illinois economy as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to keep businesses either closed or at 25% capacity.
"Every metro area and its claimants will be impacted by the expiration of the federal CARES Act unemployment programs in just a few short weeks, and the Pritzker administration (Gov. J.B. Pritzker) will continue to call on the federal government to provide claimant stability through the end of this pandemic,” said Deputy Gov. Dan Hynes in a prepared statement to the news website Week.com.
The report said non-farm jobs have plummeted, in the Peoria metro area by 16,800, to 154,800, a 9.8% drop over last year according to figures supplied by the U.S. Dept. of Labor and the Illinois Dept. of Employment Security (IDES). The Bloomington metro area lost 5,900 jobs from last year for a total of 88,200 in November.
All over the country, thousands of jobs have been lost because of the pandemic
| istock
All 14 metropolitan areas of Illinois seen overall declines in payroll amounts.
The jobless rate rose to from 4.2% to 5.5% in Peoria in October of 2019. In Bloomington, the rate rose to 4.1% last month, an increase from 3.4% a year ago.
Across Illinois the state jobless rate rose from 3.5% in October of 2019 to the current 6.5%.
Hynes said the state will continue to do the best it can to provide services to persons seeking claims, job seekers and employers.
Last June, the Economic and Fiscal Health Impact Group - Report 2 by the University of Illinois Institute of Government and Public Affairs (IGPA) predicted that more than 551,000 jobs could be lost by March 2021 from the pandemic.
“The recession brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and associated policy responses has been deeper than any recession in modern history, and also developed with unprecedented speed,” IGPA affiliate and report co-author Kenneth Kriz said on a website for the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health. Kriz is also the director of the Institute for Illinois Public Finance at the University of Illinois at Springfield.
“While many economists feel that the economy is at or near the worst that it will get, there is a strong divergence of opinion regarding how long the recession will last and the speed of the recovery," said Kriz in the website report.
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