The Illinois Department of Unemployment is responsible for forwarding information about unemployment in Illinois to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is interested in gathering information about Illinois unemployment because as a division of the Department of Labor, the Bureau of Labor Statistics is responsible for collecting information about unemployment in Illinois and unemployment around the country.
Over the six month period between March 2010 and August 2010, the Illinois Department of Unemployment saw the number of individuals to how it was responsible for administering Illinois unemployment benefits to shrink from 764.8 thousand individuals in March to just 671.4 thousand individuals in August. At the same time, the Civilian Labor Force in the state dropped to 6,624,000 people in August from 6,668,000 people in March. This means that the rate of unemployment in Illinois dropped from 11.5 percent unemployment to 10.1 percent Illinois unemployment.
The Illinois Department of Unemployment analyzes trends of unemployment in Illinois across the state and in individual metropolitan areas. The thirteen metropolitan areas with which the Illinois Department of Unemployment focuses its efforts are:
· the Bloomington-Normal, IL metropolitan area,
· the Cape Girardeau-Jackson, MO-IL metropolitan area,
· the Champaign-Urbana, IL metropolitan area,
· the Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, IL (Metropolitan Division) metropolitan area,
· the Danville, IL metropolitan area,
· the Davenport-Moline-Rock Island, IA-IL metropolitan area,
· the Decatur, IL metropolitan area,
· the Kankakee-Bradley, IL metropolitan area,
· the Lake County-Kenosha County, IL-WI (Metropolitan Division) metropolitan area,
· the Peoria, IL metropolitan area,
· the Rockford, IL metropolitan area,
· the St. Louis, MO-IL metropolitan area,
· and the Springfield, IL metropolitan area.