Unemployment Reaches 6 year low

The local unemployment rate dropped to 4.4% in August, the lowest it has been since 2000, when it was also 4.4%. This puts the rate below the Illinois and National average which was both at 4.6%.

The highest rate in Illinois was Alexander county at 9.9%. The lowest was Brown and Mc Henry tie at 3.4%

The future looks bright for job seekers.

“Unemployment continues to decline in Illinois and new jobs are being created at a strong and steady pace as economic activity increases,” IDES Director Brenda A. Russell said.

The biggest growers were Management, business, and financial operations occupations and Production, transportation, and material moving occupations each with about half a million new workers. Farming, fishing, and forestry shrank by about 100,000.

This is probably going to be the only editorial post I am going to make on this blog. I will be using this blog as part of my resume for future employers in the journalism field. The content of this blog will be strictly news based and cover many different areas, just like you would find in a regular newspaper. The subjects will be ones that interest me and I can find research material on. I will try to make a regular post once a week and give the subject for the next week. I will be covering things like local and national news stories, reporting on sporting events, music, television and movie reviews as well. I will try to make the topics varied to show range and depth. I may start off with a few subjects that I enjoy and some topics may be skewed to my personal preferences in the beginning, but that is mostly to get the ball rolling. After a while I will start to pick random topics, or would be willing to accept suggestions from readers. No catch phrases, no comedy, no swearing, and no personal opinions. My purpose of this is to show my writing and journalism skills, not to post my thoughts on a particular subject.

Please feel free to leave comments, feed back is definitely appreciated in this project.

Next weeks topic: Unemployment in the Quad-Cities.