Illinois Predicted To Be Last in Job Creation in 2014

Given the current state of our state, perhaps this shouldn't be a surprise.  According to Moody's Analytics Illinois is projected to rank 50th in the country in job creation for 2014. And just to remind you, there only are 50 states.  That makes Illinois dead last.

Moody's predicts that the number of job in the Prairie State will grow at 0.98 percent. That equates to an increase of only 57,000 jobs.   There are no other Midwest states among the bottom 10 on the list.

This comes on the heels on a pretty dismal 2013 for Illinois as well.  As David Freddoso at ConservativeIntel.com first noted, the state’s economy crashed and burned for the better part of this year.  There's a slight uptick in the number of people employed toward the end of the year, but I wonder how much of that is simply seasonal jobs.

In fact, over the course of last year the number of people employed in Illinois crashed from 6,037,524 in January to 5,955,711, while the number of Illinois residents in the labor force fell from 6,632,052 to 6,523,163.  That fact is the only reason the state's unemployment rate dropped by 0.3 through the year.

What's not known is who the GOP nominee for Governor will be.  What is known: a change is needed at the top in Springfield in November of 2014.