By Cole Lauterbach/Illinois Radio Network

SPRINGFIELD – Depending on where you live in Illinois, getting a job in the next three months can range from difficult to nearly impossible.

Employment company Manpower asks employers across Illinois about their intentions to hire more people every quarter. A report on their answers said hiring statewide will be mostly flat and a little better than last year’s first quarter, but Manpower Regional Vice President Anne Edmunds said it depends on where you are in the state — the Chicagoland area or downstate.

“(The Chicago suburbs) is a highly competitive area to attract skilled workers, where downstate, you don’t have as many opportunities, and you don’t have as many companies moving into that downstate area,” she said. “The state, especially southern Illinois, is tied heavily to manufacturing, and there just aren’t as many opportunities.”

Edmunds said the vast majority of those businesses doing the hiring are in the Chicago suburbs – so much so that they are beginning to raise wages to attract enough talent.

“Areas like Joliet and even the Kankakee area have been raising pay rates pretty aggressively.”

Roughly 12 percent of the employers surveyed said they plan to hire in the next three months, and 6 percent said they would decrease their workforce. Nationwide, 19 percent of employers plan to hire in the first quarter of 2017.