By Cole Lauterbach/Illinois Radio Network
SPRINGFIELD – Employers in Illinois plan to largely hold steady with their employment rate, while some show some modest desire to grow, according to a new report.
Employment company Manpower released its quarterly employment projections for July through September. Of the companies they polled in Illinois, almost three quarters don’t plan to expand their payrolls in the next three months.
Chris Layden, managing director of Experis, a division of Manpower Group, says nationally, a number of companies in almost all sectors are looking to expand.
“In the coming quarter, 22 percent of businesses we surveyed look to increase staff levels,” Layden said.
The outlook doesn’t necessarily mean a glut of jobs in the market, he said.
“It’s not the number of people being hired but the number of businesses looking to hire,” Layden said.
This means one business looking to add one person registers in the data the same as a company looking to hire 1,000.
In contrast to Illinois, nearly a third of businesses across the river in Iowa plan to expand, one of the highest percentages in the nation. Liz Murray-Tallman, director of Economic Development with the Quad Cities Chamber of Commerce, says the two sides of the river are similar except for differing costs on businesses.
“If you’re gonna look at barriers to growth in comparing the two sides of the river, some of those costs are going to be different,” she said.
Illinois has among the highest property taxes and workers’ compensation costs in the nation, particularly compared to Iowa. But Iowa has a progressive income tax – which Illinois does not – that tops out at almost 9 percent for incomes over $70,000.
The new jobs may be too late for some. Illinois’ labor force shrank by almost 18,000 in April, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This means 18,000 people have either stopped looking for work and decided to go back to school, retire, move, or just give up.
In a tale of contrasting regions, 23 percent of Chicago-area businesses plan to expand in Q3, six percent more than St. Louis and the surrounding area.
