The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics just released its finalized employment numbers for 2024 so we can now do a full review of job creation under Gov. J.B. Pritzker since 2019, the year he took office.
Wirepoints compared the number of payroll jobs across all fifty states in both 2024 and 2019 (annual averages*), and for Illinois, the facts are damning.
Illinois had fewer private sector jobs over the period, losing a total of 1,900 total jobs. It was the nation’s 5th-worst performance.
Compare that to the net new private sector jobs created in Texas: 1.2 million. Or Florida, up 930,000 jobs. Even California managed to create 520,000 net new private sector positions over the same period.
Illinois’ neighbors? Missouri had 71,800 more private sector jobs in 2024 than in 2019. Indiana was up by 95,600. Michigan, up 41,100. Kentucky has nearly 90,000 more. Iowa – a fourth the size of Illinois – gained 3,200 jobs.
Overall Growth
Illinois did manage to create overall job growth over the period, but only because of a growth in government jobs. Total local, state and federal government jobs were up by 11,500 compared to 2019.
Taking into account both private and government sectors, Illinois ranked as 11th-worst in total net job creation since 2019. In all, the state has created just 9,600 net new jobs since 2019.
Illinois’ job creation is anemic compared to its big-state peers. Aside from Illinois’ overall lack of growth, what’s notable about the other big states is how little they’ve depended on new government jobs for overall job creation.
Government jobs contributed only single-digit shares to the other states’ overall job growth. North Carolina’s share was just 8%. Florida’s just 3%. Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York even had negative government job growth over the period.
Illinois, in contrast, because of its loss of private sector jobs, relied entirely on government for its overall job growth.
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At Wirepoints, we’ve consistently made the case that Illinois’ many failed policies have turned the state into an extreme national outlier on the metrics that matter most for its residents.
It’s the same for jobs. Things won’t change for Illinoisans until they connect the dots between Illinois’ bad policies, its bad outcomes and the politicians they vote for.
*Note: Wirepoints used annual averages to avoid the volatility inherent in comparing point-to-point monthly jobs numbers. Comparing years using annual averages of job numbers from Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data is a common and appropriate approach. The BLS itself often reports and analyzes employment trends using annual averages to smooth out short-term fluctuations and provide a more stable year-over-year comparison.
