Illinois Careers See 7,000 Worker Loss

Posted on January 8, 2009

Several workers with Illinois careers will soon face their fate as Illinois companies are planning to cut more than 7,000 jobs.

During December, 23 companies filed layoff notices with the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity under the state’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Act, which requires companies with at least 75 workers to publicly disclose any job cuts exceeding on-third of their staff or more than 250 workers.

According to an article by Chicago Business, the state’s December WARN figures were about six times the total number of job losses during November. Illinois only saw WARN documents for 1,700 jobs during December of last year.

The biggest job cuts are coming from the following companies:

During November 2008, Illinois had a total non-farm employment of 5,936,400 workers according to the United States Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is down from 5,959,400 workers during October 2008 and a .8 percent decrease from last year. The state had an unemployment rate of 7.3 percent during November, the same as during October but higher than the national unemployment rate of 6.5 percent.