The data is from the Illinois Department of Employment Security. Unlike most jobs numbers, it is based not on surveys and estimates but on an actual hard count of private-sector jobs covered by unemployment insurance that is considered highly reliable.

According to the report, the total number of jobs in the six-county metro area in the year ended March 31 grew just 1,361, to 3,598,232. That’s not even a tenth of a percent, and far and away is the lowest annual rise since the city and state began recovering from the subprime mortgage recession a decade ago.