The Rauner administration’s economic development chief says Illinois’ higher-thanaverage unemployment rate means Illinois should decrease workers’ compensation costs to businesses and cut property taxes.

However, a closer look at state jobs data shows Illinois has gained jobs steadily since the Great Recession, undercutting the narrative that Illinois is particularly unfriendly to businesses.

The Illinois Department of Employment Security announced its January unemployment numbers earlier this month, revealing that the state unemployment rate climbed to 6.3 percent in February from a recent low of 5.4 percent in September 2015. Last week, IDES released the February unemployment rate of 6.4 percent, a 0.1 percentage-point uptick from January. The national unemployment rate for January and February 2016 was 4.9 percent.

Jim Schultz, director of the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, attributed the January rate to “out of control workers’ compensation costs and the second highest property taxes in the nation.” He called for the Illinois General Assembly to pass legislation mirroring part of Gov. Bruce Rauner’s “Turnaround Agenda,” which calls for several “business-friendly” changes to Illinois government, many of which directly or indirectly curtail the rights of labor unions or workers in general. Rauner frequently pans Illinois’ economy as a means of drumming up support for his “businessfriendly” changes, and Schultz’s rhetoric mirrors the governor’s.

“We cannot continue failed policies that have stymied economic growth in Illinois for years, driving businesses, jobs and residents to friendlier states,” Schultz said via press release. “We need structural reforms to address the high cost of doing business in Illinois.”

Schultz donated $5,000 to Rauner’s campaign for governor in March 2014 – a drop in the bucket toward Rauner’s fundraising total, but a show of support nonetheless. Rauner appointed Schultz, who founded and continues to run a private equity firm in Effingham, to direct DCEO in February 2015.

When Schultz commented on the January unemployment rate, Illinois was in the middle of its yearly seasonal downturn of total jobs. IDES data from 2000 to 2015 show that each January, the number of total jobs is at its lowest before ramping up steeply each month until summer. Despite that seasonal rise and fall, the data show that Illinois has added an average of 70,000 jobs each year from when the Great Recession began to recede in 2011 to 2015.

This isn’t the first time Schultz’ take on employment numbers has conveniently fit the narrative of his boss. When the state’s September 2015 unemployment rate was announced, Schultz focused on that month’s loss of 6,900 jobs, rather than the net 27,000 jobs Illinois had gained since the start of that year.

“While the country is reporting new levels of peak employment well above prerecession levels, Illinois continues to fall farther and farther behind, losing thousands of jobs a month and pushing people out of our workforce and our state,” Schultz said in October.

Breaking down the total jobs number by industry sector reveals that Illinois has followed the larger trend of the U.S. moving from a manufacturing-based economy to a service-based economy. Since 2000, manufacturing has lost the most jobs of any industry sector in Illinois, while the largest increase was in professional and business services. In fact, employment in professional and business services within Illinois is actually stronger now than during the economic boom that preceded the Great Recession.

Although Illinois’ unemployment rate is higher than the national average, the unemployment rate alone is widely considered to be an incomplete measure of economic health. It’s calculated not by counting the number of people receiving unemployment benefits, but by surveying a rotating sample of households across the nation. The number of unemployed people doesn’t include those who aren’t “actively” looking for work, and the data is “seasonally adjusted” to account for factors like weather and holidays.

The complexity of the unemployment rate is illustrated by the seeming disconnect between that rate and the state’s monthly job gains or losses. In September 2015, Illinois lost 6,900 nonfarm jobs, yet the unemployment rate decreased that month from 5.8 percent to 5.4 percent. It was the same month that several other states enjoyed their lowest unemployment rate in more than a decade. When Illinois gained 1,500 jobs in January 2016, the unemployment rate climbed from 5.9 percent to 6.3 percent. Illinois added another 18,100 jobs in February, the same month that the state’s unemployment rate climbed another tenth of a percent, to 6.4.

Contact Patrick Yeagle at [email protected].