Illinois’ recovery is still 7 years away

The Great Recession knocked 500,000 Illinoisans out of work from January 2008 to November 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ household survey. And since then, only 200,000 Illinoisans have gone back to work. This stands as one of the country’s slowest recoveries. As a result, Illinois has 300,000 fewer people working today than...

The Great Recession knocked 500,000 Illinoisans out of work from January 2008 to November 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ household survey. And since then, only 200,000 Illinoisans have gone back to work. This stands as one of the country’s slowest recoveries.

As a result, Illinois has 300,000 fewer people working today than when the Great Recession began. This is the biggest employment gap of any state in the U.S.

At Illinois’ current pace of growth, it will take until September of 2021 just to have the same number of people working as when the recession began.

Illinois went into the recession with an uncompetitive regulatory environment, which contributed to a weak recovery. In addition, Illinois made the historic misstep of drastically raising income taxes in the midst of recovery. After the tax hike, monthly employment growth slowed down by an astounding 62 percent.

The result of Illinois’ anti-business environment and tax-hiking ways is a recovery that is estimated to drag on for seven more years – and that’s just to get back to the number of Illinoisans who were working in January 2008.

Meanwhile, Illinois’ working-age population will have grown by more than 700,000.

Half of American states have already recovered their employment losses from the Great Recession. By any measure, Illinois’ recovery has been far too slow. And for recovery to come in 2021, nearly two gubernatorial terms away, is an unacceptable failure of state policymakers.