Volume 9, No. 2


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An Examination of the Illinois and United States Economy Using Current Employment Statistics Data

Demographic Issues Facing the “New” Workforce

New Standards and Geographic Definitions for Metropolitan Statistical Areas

Important Changes to Illinois Statewide and Sub-State Labor Force Estimates

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An Examination of the Illinois and United States Economy Using Current Employment Statistics Data

by Dave Bieneman

The national economy has shown economic growth for several quarters since the recession of 2001. This growth is demonstrated by increases in the measure of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). However the growth in the number of jobs since then has not attained similar success. There has been a lag in the labor market with some increase in the number of jobs during 2004, but even that number is not up to expectations. This is a summary of an article that compares industry employment in Illinois to employment at the national level, and to an area that includes data for the border states of Illinois. The entire text of the article is available on the LMI Source at http://lmi.ides.state.il.us/lmr/article 2.pdf.

A timely examination of industry employment in Illinois, Illinois and its border states (IBS), and the U.S. can be accomplished using Current Employment Statistics (CES) data. This dataset is a monthly data series of employment estimates by industry. Since the most recent data available from the CES program at the time this paper was written was August of 2004, we will use that data and go back in time in 12-month intervals to 1999. Table 1 shows proportions of industry employment for August of each year in Illinois, the U.S., and for IBS. This information provides the opportunity to see changes in composition of industry employment for the U.S. and the respective states.

A few items of importance include the fact that manufacturing has a 12.1% share of employment in Illinois for August of 2004, which is much lower than the 14.8% share it had in August of 1999. The proportion of total employment that was manufacturing in the United States declined from 13.4% in 1999 to 11.0% in 2004. Combining Illinois with its 6 border states to form an IBS area CES data series shows that these states started with a 17.8% manufacturing share in 1999 and ended up with a 15.1% share in 2004. Clearly, manufacturing employment has suffered steadily the last few years, and many of those jobs are not coming back. The period between 2000 and 2003 was especially hard on the manufacturing sector.

Other trends include significant increases in the proportion of Illinois employment for educational and health services, leisure and hospitality, and government. These increases are similar to the increases seen at the national level and for IBS. A smaller increase can be seen in all 3 geographies for the construction industry. Small decreases in Illinois’ employment shares can be seen in trade, transportation, and utilities, information, and professional and business services. Both the U.S. and IBS see these same decreases with the exception of professional and business services.

Table 2 helps to verify what was seen in Table 1. The United States has lost 2,867,000 manufacturing jobs from August of 1999 to August of 2004. That is a 16.6% decrease in manufacturing employment in the U.S. according to CES numbers. Illinois has lost 173,800 manufacturing jobs in the same time period, which is a 19.8% decrease in employment for the state’s manufacturing industry. The IBS data series shows a loss of 677,100 manufacturing jobs from 1999-2004, a 17.0% decrease in employment of that industry. The IBS series accounts for 23.6% of the national job loss in manufacturing, with Illinois accounting for about a quarter of that, at 6.1% of the national decline. The IBS area accounts for 17.3% of overall national employment.
Illinois had a higher percentage increase for job growth than the nation and the IBS in the industries of construction and leisure & hospitality.

Illinois had a larger decline in employment than U.S. for trade, transportation & utilities, but still fared better than the IBS as a whole. In addition, Illinois had a slightly larger decline in the information industry and a more pronounced decline in the financial activities and professional & business services industries compared to the U.S. and IBS.

The U.S., IBS and Illinois all had an increase in jobs in the educational and health services sector, but Illinois lagged behind the other geographies with a 9.7% increase over the 5 year period. Government employment was up 5.8% nationally, 1.5% for the IBS region, and 2.9% for the state. All 3 areas showed declines in the level of government employment in the period 2002 to 2004.

It is clear that the recession has had a much larger impact on the employment of Illinois and its surrounding border states than it has on national employment. This is likely due to the composition of industries that form the economies of these Midwestern states, how individual industries were impacted by the recession, and the resulting structural changes to the economy overall.