State of Illinois pays down unemployment insurance fund debt

Posted on September 27, 2022
The outstanding debt in the unemployment insurance trust fund is now $1.3 billion dollars (WJBC File Photo)

By Dave Dahl

SPRINGFIELD – The diminished total of jobless claims and growth in the fund itself allow the state to pay down $450 million in debt of the unemployment insurance trust fund. 

“Paying down debt means that we are paying less interest, so we are saving over the next year $10 million for taxpayers; and the more we pay down, obviously, the more we are saving for taxpayers,” said Gov. JB Pritzker Thursday at a Chicago news conference. “You saw us do that with $5 billion of debt reduction over the course of the past year.”

The outstanding debt in the unemployment insurance trust fund is now $1.3 billion dollars, which Pritzker hopes to have wiped out by the end of the year.

Dave Dahl can be reached at [email protected].

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