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.