By: Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner
Wirepoints has documented in detail how Illinois’ progressive and equity-focused policies have inflicted harm on minorities – blacks in particular – across education, criminal justice, social welfare and more. Far from reducing racial gaps, they’ve only amplified them.
Now add the state’s jobs climate to that list. Illinois is an extreme national outlier when it comes to fostering a robust jobs environment for black residents.
The state’s black unemployment rate was 10.5 percent in Q1 2023, the nation’s 2nd-highest according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Only Nevada’s black unemployment rate was higher at 11 percent.
Every one of Illinois’ neighboring states had far lower black unemployment rates. Michigan, even with long-struggling Detroit, had an unemployment rate of 6.4 percent. Indiana’s blacks had a rate of 6 percent. Iowa’s rate was just 4.7 percent. And Missouri had the best job climate of all, with a black unemployment rate of just 4.6 percent.
What’s all the more damning is that Illinois remains an extreme outlier despite the current “historically low unemployment rate for Black workers” nationally, according to EPI. The national average for blacks in Q1 was 5.7 percent.
Illinois’ policy failures also show themselves in the country’s worst black-white unemployment gap of 7.2 percent. With a white unemployment rate of 3.3 percent and a black rate of 10.5 percent, no other state is as far from “equity” as Illinois is.
Contrast that with Florida’s black-white gap of just 1.2 percentage points (not to mention its overall low black unemployment rate of just 3.8 percent).
Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s equity focus and programming hasn’t resulted in any improvement for minority employment. In fact, things are worse. Between 2019 when Pritzker first took office and 2022, Illinois’ annual black unemployment actually increased to 10.9 percent, up from 8.7 percent. That 2.2 percentage point increase is the third-highest in the country, behind only New Jersey and Washington’s increase.
Lawmakers might try to blame the pandemic for Illinois’ poor performance on black jobs, but that doesn’t explain how states like Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi managed to cut their own black unemployment rates by one, two or even three percentage points over the same period.
And at 4.8 percentage points in 2022, the gap between Illinois’ black unemployment rate and the national average is the largest it’s been since at least the year 2000.
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“You’ll never fix the minority wealth gap by handing out more food stamps and more Medicaid dollars. The only way to really help black communities is through encouraging entrepreneurship, jobs and investment” Wirepoints explained to WVON’s Matt McGill earlier this year.
Unfortunately Illinois’ leadership only seems interested in delivering more handouts, programs and spending. Real jobs and natural investment are ignored in their desire to achieve “equity.”
The question that remains is, how much worse will Illinois’ outcomes have to get before Illinois voters finally reject their lawmakers’ damaging obsession.
Appendix.
Illinois’ black job numbers are driven in large part by Chicago. The latest numbers we have are from 2021, but they’re still indicative of the city’s dismal performance on black unemployment.
That year Chicago’s black unemployment averaged 19.9 percent – the highest among the nation’s top 15 biggest cities.
Read more from Wirepoints:
Audio and summary 
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
Something to remember next time I hear someone crowing about progressive, equitable, bursting at the seams with opportunities Illinois. Especially those that look down on southern states. They must be doing something right.
Illinois Democrats are racist. Actions speak louder than words and their actions, unfortunately are racist.
Root Causes Johnson will soon add reparations to his litany of half-baked interventions to remedy.
Wirepoints continues to display the stats about how Dems are hurting their states, especially blacks. How many undereducated voters can actually comprehend the stats? How many have an open mind to see truth/facts? Not enough to make a difference.
Democrats enslaved blacks before the Civil War, and they continue to enslave them to this very day by encouraging them to be dependent on government. The only question is this: does the black culture of today actually like being enslaved? It seems that they do because they vote for it every election. Perhaps they like being kept.
Over twenty years ago I started working in Gary IN and noticed several HEW street signs along I-20 in four languages stating that only legal immigration status was needed for employment. My colleagues reported that during the late 1970s Vietnamese families settled there, obtained employment and moved out within a few weeks (!) later having acquired better paying jobs. Dr. Thomas Sowell pointed out that new groups sought employment even when transportation was not available. Why do blacks wait for handouts? We all know that they were taught and learned helplessness! The biggest boon for blacks was the cessation of… Read more »
Hmm, one party rule has a disparate outcome? Who’d a thought the Democratic Party causes structural racism?
And just what is the unemployment rate of the illegal immigrants in Chicago ?
The CPS failure to teach and just pass them through the system has created a large income gap that will last for generations to come. Their failure has cheated a generation out of a future. The taxpayers paid top dollar to create a generation of criminals.
Democrats keep them on the ‘plantation’ – dependency on government. Now Democrats are trying to add to that with illegals.
All those ‘racist’ Red States have such low Black unemployment relative to IL – My goodness JB, what did you and the Leftist Democrats do!?