Good News!!

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (AP) — Unemployment dropped to 9.8 percent in Illinois in December, state officials said Friday, a second straight monthly decrease that capped a year in which the jobless rate fell almost a full percentage point from 2010.

via Chicago Tribune.

Or, maybe not:

The unemployment rate in the Chicago area rose to 10.2 percent in December from 9.3 percent a year ago, according to seasonally adjusted figures released Thursday by the Illinois Department of Employment Security.

via Chicago Tribune.

Hummm…  So, I can’t tell if this is good news or bad news.  So I did some searching and found a cool link at CapitalFax.com which led me to a supercool Google tool were one can graph public data.

The unemployment rate for the last 20 years of several mid-western states:

Then check out the same graph for the last 5 years:

Wisconsin and Michigan appear to be heading in the right direction.  Illinois… not so much.