David Severin, the Republican candidate for the Illinois State House in District 117, which encompasses Southern Illinois, recently commented about the loss of 1,300 jobs in the Carbondale-Marion area.
The sizeable decrease in jobs lost took place over a year. The statistics were released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES). The study compares the number of jobs in August of this year to that in August 2015.
"Friends, we can either go down the same path we've been going for more than a decade — or we can do something different," Severin said in a Facebook post. "We can reform the way we do business in Illinois. Let's finally make the change in leadership we deserve."
The number of jobs lost in the period the BLS recorded dropped from 57,000 non-farm jobs to 55,700 in just a year. Dennis Hoffman, IDES labor market economist, said many factors could affect job losses in the area. Among his reasons are the high level of commuters.
“There’s a tremendous amount of out-commuting throughout the area,” Hoffman said, “and there’s also a lot of in-commuting.”
In Southern Illinois, much of the job losses were concentrated in mining, manufacturing, information and government.
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