Despite continued growth in payrolls as a whole, Illinois is still missing 146,300 jobs relative to pre-pandemic levels, with the missing jobs being spread across nearly every metro area. Bloomington is the only metro area in the state to recover from early 2020 job losses.
A largely unasked question is becoming glaring: Is Illinois doing all it should to use artificial intelligence to make government cost less and work better? So far, the evidence says no.