It’s no secret the Rockford metro area has the highest unemployment rate in the state. That drum gets beaten in nearly every local political speech and within the first three sentences of any outside media story featuring the Rock River Valley.
The rate’s been the highest among Illinois metro areas since February 2008, when Kankakee topped us with a then-high 8.8 percent. (Rockford’s rate was 8.1 percent at the time, just three months into the recession.) Since I’ve been covering the local employment situation, it’s been the highest by a wide margin, and even now with a soft recovery under way it’s still tops by several percentage points.
After digging through data going back to 1976, however, I found out something surprising: we’re usually a distant second in the who’s-the-highest race.
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The Danville metro area has posted the highest rate in the state a whopping 237 months, or nearly 20 years, since January 1976. (The totals include a couple of ties.) So why has Rockford been tops in this most recent recession?
“Our proportion of manufacturing work continues to make us vulnerable,” said Joel Cowen, assistant dean of health systems research at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Rockford. Cowen said around one-quarter of our jobs are in that sector.
“As manufacturing declined, it’s been a real downward trend for employment,” he said.
Our 29-month stretch with the highest unemployment rate in the state is Rockford’s longest run of consecutive months I can find in my data. Danville was the highest in the state for 55 months starting in September 1986. (Yes, we’re the ones who broke that streak: Danville’s rate was 8.7 percent, ours was 9.2.)
Interesting stuff — but even as Cowen said, sometimes a statistic is just a statistic.
“There’s a lot in economics that’s random,” he said. “I would expect that there will be a time where someone beats us again.”
(Standard disclaimer: The unemployment rate measures the share of jobless individuals in the labor force (the sum of employed and unemployed people) and not the entire population. Those who are unemployed but not actively looking for work are not considered part of the labor force. The unemployment rate is not the same measurement as those collecting unemployment benefits. A person who exhausts or is ineligible for unemployment insurance still would be reflected in the unemployment rate if he or she is seeking employment.)
In effect, what is being said is the quicksand here is not so bad compared to other places. Well guess what, ten feet of quicksand is just as bad as 20 feet; the end result is the same. When you’re dead, you’re dead. Doesn’t matter of you got hit by a car or died of cancer; it’s over.
It isn’t just the “proportion of manufacturing work continues to make us vulnerable,” rather the lack of diversity in manufacturing as a sector that has enormous impact on the vulnerability. Secondly, it is the regions overall low aggregate education level that makes it vulnerable to manufacturing downturns.
Without the diversity of employment opportunities in many more sectors of employment, a region is always vulnerable to downturns that are more stagnant than more diverse regional economies.
Eau Claire, Wisconsin, for instance has about 10% of its employment in manufacturing. Rockford has about 26% of its employment tied to manufacturing.
The difference is that the types and diversity of High Tech, Old Manufacturing and a robust private/public education sector seems to always keep its unemployment rate low in Eau Claire as opposed to Rockford.
Rockford’s 4 year decree holder rate is only about a third of what it is in Eau Claire. A well educated employee makes for a more flexible economy as well as a more stable job holder and a more valuable employee to the employer.
Hence, these factors create a more stable economy for a region, IMO in general.
The unemployment rate among the well educated historically in this country is always lower than the poorly educated.
How low is the unemployment rate in Eau Claire? 6.7%, not seasonally adjusted for August.
http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=usunemployment&met=unemployment_rate&idim=county:CN550350&dl=en&hl=en&q=unemployment+rate+eau+claire+wi
Less manufacturing — this is a solution?
“Our proportion of manufacturing work continues to make us vulnerable,” said Joel Cowen, assistant dean of health systems research at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Rockford. Cowen said around one-quarter of our jobs are in that sector.
Brilliant statement!
The off-shoring of our manufacturing jobs is our primary problem and that of our entire nation. Remember when “only the low-end jobs would be lost to NAFTA”? Well, we have little left to trade on the international market and are now forced to buy most “things” from foreign producers.
There was a time when we could have protected our jobs by only allowing imports (including those of US expatriates) which were made under conditions imposed on our companies — OSHA, EPA, Minimum Wage, Child Labor Laws, Unemployment Insurance and others.
As the dollar is pushed lower in an attempt to pay off debt with cheaper currency — the cost to individuals will continue to rise.
What is also not shown it the stats is the under-employment. Manufacturing jobs were replaced with lower wages and fewer benefits. Recent grads must now compete for theses jobs against retirees whose retirement stash is far less than a few years go. People without jobs who have mortgages can’t sell to go where they may find work.