Knox County’s unemployment rate maintained at 4.2 percent for the month of March, although coronavirus related closures didn’t reach full force until April.
Knox County for the third straight month saw record low numbers in the labor force, now standing at 19,891. That’s a loss of 14 percent of workers in the last 2 years.
The Illinois Department of Employment Security says all 12 metro areas in the state saw lower unemployment brought on by a shrinking labor force as business closed and workers transitioned due to COVID-19.
Illinois has a whole experienced a 2.7 percent loss in the number of people looking for working in the trailing twelve months.
However, those figures were more acute outside of the Chicago area; Knox County in particular that lost 8.7 percent of its labor force in the same period.
Warren County hasn’t experienced the long trend losses in workers that Knox County has but saw a stunning a 9.5 percent drop from February to March.
Only two of Illinois’ metro areas added jobs in March; Kankakee and Champaign.
Not surprisingly the jobs category that saw the largest increase in most metro areas were in health and education.
Economists have said shrinking labor forces across the country could reflect early retirements, which tend to increase when the number of people unemployed rises.
