If unemployment is any indicator of how the economy is doing, locally it hasn’t changed much since last summer. Numbers released by the Illinois Department of Employment Security show that area unemployment levels were slightly better in August than they were last August.
Unemployment in La Salle County last month was 11.1%, in Bureau County it was 10% and in Putnam County was 9.2%.
For the Ottawa-Streator area it was 10.8%. Over the past year jobs were added in construction and professional-business services but many were lost in manufacturing and retail.