Unemployment held steady in the Quad Cities last month, at 4.8 per cent, the same as in February of last year.
Tom Austin from the Illinois Department of Employment Security says this area added about 1,500 jobs during the past year.
"With industries such as manufacturing, and professional and business services seeing growth, when we look over the year. We did see some declines in industries such as retail trade and government that led the declines for the over-the-year change."
And our unemployment rate of 4.8 per cent means about 9,200 people were out of work in February and looking for jobs.
Across Illinois, unemployment rates rose in ten of the major metropolitan areas, mainly because people who had not been looking for jobs, officially entered the labor force and started looking. The rate fell in two, and was unchanged in two others - the Quad Cities and Carbondale-Marion.
