ILLINOIS UNEMPLOYMENT DROPS

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The Illinois Department of Employment Security has announced that the state unemployment rate for August has dropped .1 percentage point to 7% in August.  That is based on preliminary data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the IDES. In August, there were job gains in the areas of Leisure and Hospitality, Manufacturing and Government. The Illinois unemployment rate is 1.8 percentage points higher than the national jobless rate of 5.2% in August. IDES officials say that decreasing jobless rate and continuing job stabilization is encouraging for the state economy. The individual jobless figures for counties across Illinois including southeastern Illinois and Lawrence County have not yet been released by the IDES.