Pandemic job recovery in Illinois lags other states
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[October 12, 2021]
By Kevin Bessler
(The Center Square) – A new study looks at
how Illinois and other blue states compare with red states in recovery
jobs lost during the COVID-19 pandemic.
MoneyGeek’s study, “American Employment and the Pandemic: COVID-19 Cases
and Job Recovery by State and Political Affiliation” found that 14
states fully recovered to jobs levels above those in February 2020, a
month before the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global
pandemic.
While many businesses have reopened since the early days of the
pandemic, 5.3 million jobs are still missing. MoneyGeek analyzed
employment and COVID-19 case data by state to find which states
recovered the most jobs and what measures correlated with their success.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2021/Oct/12/images/ads/current/humanesociety_sda022411.png)
MoneyGeek reports Illinois has recovered 78% of the lost jobs, which
ranks 34th in the country. That is compared to neighbors Missouri and
Wisconsin and 12 other states that have recovered more than 100% of the
lost jobs.
Illinois added just 2,500 jobs in the latest jobs report. The sluggish
August jobs report comes after a strong performance in July, in which
numbers show the state added more than 38,000 jobs.
The report shows as of July, red and blue states recovered the same
percentage of jobs lost since the April 2020 low. However, blue states
like Illinois lost more jobs than red states at the start of the
pandemic, making it more difficult for them to recover jobs to
pre-pandemic levels.
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“Blue states have really started to add back jobs and
open up a lot more now that vaccines have become more widely
available, and red states started a little bit earlier,” MoneyGeek
spokesman Doug Milnes said.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker kept business restrictions, including capacity
limits, on the books for over a year. The governor said it was for
the health and safety of Illinoisans. Some businesses didn’t
survive. Using data from Harvard University, an analysis from the
nonpartisan Illinois Policy Institute found that 35% of small
businesses in Illinois were closed this past spring compared to
before the pandemic.
The MoneyGeek study showed from April to December 2020, jobs
recovered for red and blue states were comparable (12% to 11%,
respectively). The study also found that cases and deaths per job
recovered were similar for blue and red states, showing that the
state’s different approaches to the pandemic didn’t yield meaningful
differences in job growth and COVID-19 cases during the latter part
of 2020.
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