May showed another month of Knox County being well above the state and national average for unemployment.
Knox’s rate for the month was 6.1 percent, Illinois was at 4.5 and the U.S. as a whole was at 3.4 percent.
Knox’s unemployment rate has stayed almost unchanged for three months, but with four straight months of modest growth in the labor force, which is those employed or seeking work.
Almost exactly half of the county’s labor force works in Galesburg, with the other half working in the rest of Knox.
Initial claims for unemployment insurance in the county jumped almost 50 percent in May compared with the previous month.
Knox was in the top ten worst unemployment rates for Illinois in May but Knox’s 6.1 percent is welcome in comparison to Pulaski, Boone, Winnebago, and Alexander counties which are all over 8 percent.
The West Central region which includes Knox, Warren, and Henry has a 4.4 percent rate overall.
That’s comparable only to the Northeast region of Chicagoland and the Southeast which includes Effingham and Eastern Illinois University.
