By Illinois Radio Network
SPRINGFIELD – A new report places nearly all Illinois metro areas in the bottom half of the country when
it comes to sustained job creation.
The annual study, released by the Milken Institute, also looks at wage and salary growth
and high-tech GDP growth to reach its rankings.
The Chicago metro area climbed a few spots from its place in 2018, but still ranked just
118 out of 200 large markets surveyed.
“It’s been hit because job growth has been relatively stagnant,” said Kevin Klowden,
executive director of the Milken Institute’s Center for Regional Economics. “So even
though the high-tech sector in Chicago has grown faster than the national average, overall
job and wage growth has been fairly flat, especially compared to the rest of the country.”
One-year job growth in the Windy City ranked 138th, while one-year wage growth ranked
123rd in the country.
“It’s also been in a situation where population growth has been relatively stagnant,”
Klowden said. “And even though we wouldn’t say that the economy is in a downturn,
there’s very clearly issues in terms of stagnation relative to some of the other big cities in
the country and not creating as many broad-ranging, well-paying new jobs.”
The study also contains bad news for a number of downstate communities. Peoria
checked in as the 11th-worst large metro area in the U.S.
“Peoria has been sitting incredibly low and most of that really is wage growth,” Klowden
said. “Wage growth has really been near the bottom. The agriculture and some of the
manufacturing focuses that have been going on really have been languishing and the city
hasn’t been able to attract investment.”
Among small metro areas, Bloomington was ranked 199 out of 201, with its 1-year job
growth at 198th.
“Bloomington has not been seeing the kind of activity that’s been able to push it up [the
rankings],” Klowden said. “In fact, Bloomington’s job growth has been incredibly flat
and unlike Peoria it doesn’t have as much of a sign of some more recent sustained job
growth to bring it out of the bottom of the rankings.”
The Peoria, Bloomington, Danville, Quad Cities, Decatur, and Springfield areas all hover
in the bottom quarter of the list in overall numbers.
The struggling markets in the report generally share a common trait.
“The cities that tend to sit towards the bottom, they’re vulnerable because they’re very one
industry or a couple of industry-dependent cities,” Klowden said. “They can be very reliant
on very specific areas to push them along.”
Meanwhile, Klowden said Rockford was one metro area that moved up the list due to a
significant rise in one-year job growth. Rockford’s one-year job growth ranked 52nd, the
highest position of any large or small metro in the state.
“Rockford had a lot of advantages this time in terms of its significant spike in job
growth,” Klowden said, “and, interestingly enough, even saw a spike in high tech growth.
It was coming from a very low point in rising up, but there’ve been a few companies that
have actually been hiring in Rockford.”
The Kankakee area was the strongest among Illinois’ small metro areas, while Lake
County was the best among large metros.
Nationally, the San Francisco, Provo, and Austin metros led the way among large
markets, while Youngstown, Ohio, ranked at the bottom.
