Chicago City Wire

Illinois Republicans are pointing a finger at Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot for the state’s shrinking job market.

“Democrats like Pritzker and Lightfoot continue to hold Illinois back,” the Illinois Republican Party posted on Facebook.

Illinois Republican Party Chairman Don Tracy faults Pritzker's policies as a “sociologist approach to economics” that could be causing the economy to stall even more.

“Unlike a majority of red states that have seen job  recovery rates at 70+ percent, the state has yet to crack 50 percent, with only 44.4 percent of jobs lost due to the pandemic recovered," Tracy said. “Yet, opportunities for the Biden and Pritzker administrations to  step in and work to protect job creators and get Illinoisans – any by  extension our state’s economy - back on track have not been taken.”

Critics point to a new national study that finds Chicago’s unemployment recovery rate since COVID-19 hit ranks 172nd out of the 180 most-populous U.S. cities.

According to WalletHub, the city’s unemployment recovery rate easily topped 9 percent in May, representing a 140% increase from before the pandemic in January 2020. While the city ranked near the bottom across four different metrics, researchers noted the numbers were even more dismal when comparing unemployment recovery specifically during the pandemic and preceding months.

Illinois Policy Institute is calling attention to what it sees as the warning signs.

“A decade ago, Illinois leaders raised taxes at the onset of the recovery from the Great Recession,” the website wrote in an article. “Tax hikes coupled with declining government services resulted in lower investment and sluggish productivity and employment growth, contributing to the state’s lackluster recovery relative to its peers."