Preliminary statistics have come in and it looks like Knox County has seen a nine-tenths of a percentage drop in the unemployment rate.
Numbers released Thursday from the Illinois Department of Employment Security indicate that the May 2017 unemployment rate dropped to 4.4%, down from 5.3% this time last year.
Unemployment in neighboring Fulton County saw a nine-tenths percentage drop from 6.5% to 5.6%, while Henry saw unemployment decrease from 5.3% to 4.7%.
Warren County had the lowest unemployment numbers in the area for this year with 3.8%, which was a seven-tenths of a percentage drop from May of 2016.
The largest drop over last year came from Stark County, who dropped 1.1% from 6.6% to 5.5% in that year span.
While these numbers look good, they mean two things – jobs are being added, and/or people are leaving the work force.
Henry County saw a decrease of 80 jobs while the work force shrunk by over 250 people in that year while Fulton lost over 90 jobs and saw it’s work force cut by about 240.
In Knox County’s case, 100 jobs were added, while the labor force lost 100 people all together.
Stark County saw 30 people exit the labor force while only adding 14 jobs.
In Warren County’s case, almost 70 jobs were lost and were offset with over 130 people leaving the workforce.
