Tom Austin from the Illinois Department of Employment Security says this area also added 4,800 jobs during the past year.
"A positive trend when you look at both the unemployment rate and the number of people who are not unemployed, as well as job growth, especially in those industries that were hard hit during the pandemic - leisure and hospitality, retail trade, and a strong industry in the Quad Cities area - manufacturing is also seeing some positive gains."
The Quad Cities did lose some jobs - in education and health services and in construction.
When the pandemic began in April of 2020, unemployment here hit 15.2 per cent - the highest level for the month of April in 40 years - and we lost 21,000 jobs.
Unemployment in March fell from the previous year in 13 metro areas in Illinois, and rose slightly in one - in Rockford.