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More higher-paying jobs in Illinois are being replaced by lower-paying ones as the service sector continues to gain and manufacturing positions decline, according to a report by Northern Illinois University.

The State of Working Illinois, sponsored jointly by NIU and by the nonprofit Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, also found that most Illinois workers saw a drop in average weekly earnings since 2001 when inflation is factored in.

That comes to no surprise to Gabriele Smith of Rockford. You could consider her the new face of the Rock River Valley work force.

Atwood Mobile Products let her go in 2004 when the company decided to move its manufacturing to Elkhart, Ind.

Having completed Rock Valley College’s Displaced Workers Program, Smith is excited to start a new career. She’ll begin working in the Rockford office of Addus HealthCare, a Palatine-based company that provides home health care and related services, such as nursing, rehabilitation, disease management and staffing.

“You are always shocked because you have so much time invested, even if you could see it coming,” Smith said. Her new job with Addus pays $6 an hour less than what she was making at Atwood, where she worked for 30 years.

“When it happened, I made the commitment to go back to school and learn some new skills. Rock Valley’s program was a blessing to me. It gave me some confidence, some self-worth. I proved that 33 years after high school, I could go back and make the dean’s list.”

Rock Valley’s program, started in 1983, typically has 600 to 900 people enrolled a year.

Paul Kleppner of NIU, the lead researcher for the State of Working Illinois report, said the trend to lower-wage jobs has been going on since the 1980s.

“Over the past 20 years, Illinois working families have experienced the replacement of higher-paying jobs, especially in manufacturing, with lower-paying service-sector jobs, including those in the politically popular gaming industry,” he said. “Even most of those who remained employed experienced a drop in real wages while the cost of living continues to rise.”

Indeed, a telling chart in the report detailed the dramatic rise in typical family expenses. From 1997 through 2005, when a typical worker saw wages rise 24 percent to 40 percent — based on annual increases of 3 percent to 5 percent a year — the cost of gasoline soared 83 percent, education nearly 65 percent, health care almost 45 percent, and housing more than 38 percent.

The study also showed that education is more important than ever in terms of employment.

“In today’s modern economy, it is clear that you have to learn to earn,” said Ralph Martire, executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability.

Illinoisans with college degrees were the only group of workers over the past two decades to receive wages that increased at a rate greater than inflation. Those with less than a high school education are three times more likely to be unemployed than those with at least a bachelor’s degree, the report said.

That’s a difficult trend to overcome locally where, thanks to the area’s lack of a major four-year public university, the percentage of residents with a college degree is much lower than the national average.

The Associated Press contributed to this story. Assistant Business Editor Alex Gary may be reached at agary@rrstar.com or 815-987-1339.

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