By Anna Marie Kukec
Daily Herald Business Writer
Posted Monday, December 11, 2006

Vic Conrad of Lisle was laid off in March while going through a divorce and moving to an apartment.

The year started out rough, but it’s ending on a better note. He found a job as specialty credit supervisor for Solo Cup Co. in Highland Park.

“I applied around and networked like a madman,” said Conrad, 47. “My goal was to get a new job by the end of the year and it happened.”

He said about 10 other job-seekers he knew from the Community Career Center, a Naperville employment resource, also landed permanent or contract positions in recent months.

Conrad and his colleagues are among 135,000 who got jobs in the last year, according to the “State of Working Illinois 2006,” a report that’s being released today.

It might come as a surprise given all the talk of problems in the key home and auto industries, but Illinois has seen its highest rate of employment growth in 10 years, according to the annual report prepared by the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability and Northern Illinois University.

From 2005 to 2006, the number of employed grew by about 135,000, the largest job expansion recorded in the state since 1994, said Matt Eskew, the report’s data research associate.

As a result, the state’s unemployment rate fell by 1.1 percentage points between 2005 and 2006, the second-largest drop in the nation.

“Layoffs hit so heavily before that, that any changes are going to be great,” said Eskew.

More people like Conrad are finding jobs, said Margaret Jensen, executive director of the Community Career Center.

“This has been the best time for job seekers that we’ve seen in the last five years,” said Jensen, who started with the job-search group when local telecoms were laying off by the thousands.

Despite the gains, Illinois continues to see a loss of higher-paying jobs, Eskew said.

The study finds that from 2005 to 2006, the state lost a total of 10,900 jobs in its highest paying sectors — manufacturing and information.

“The problem now is that lower-wage industries, like the service sector, tend to dominate the growth,” Eskew said.

In the past year, the state added another 64,400 service-sector jobs, which represented a 2.2 percent rate of growth.

In a recent survey of chief executives, the No. 1 problem to making their companies expand and develop innovative new products and services was the lack of highly skilled employees, said Mary Rose Hennessy. She’s executive director of Naperville-based University of Illinois/Business and Industry Services, which did the survey.

“Basically, anyone who really wants to work in Illinois is working. Job opportunities are plentiful,” Hennessy said. “The need for talented engineers and creative business people is stronger than it has been in over 20 years, and this demand is projected to continue as skilled baby boomers begin to retire.”

While the state report indicates the loss of jobs in the manufacturing sector has hurt earnings, job losses in manufacturing actually have occurred in the low-pay, low-skill-level positions, Hennessy said.

“The majority of the job losses in manufacturing have been due to the vast improvements in productivity through automation,” Hennessy said.

The new jobs created demand a higher level of skill and, therefore, command higher wages for technicians, welders and industrial maintenance. There also are many openings for supply chain managers, project managers, engineers and quality improvement professionals, she said.

The report found minority workers are a bigger part of the work force in Illinois than in the Midwest in general. In 2005, minorities made up 28 percent of in the state’s work force, 10.3 percentage points higher than the Midwest average and only slightly below the national level. The main driver of work force diversity in Illinois has been the growing Hispanic population, whose share of the work force has more than tripled since 1980, the report says.

“We’ve seen a lot of job growth, but we’ve also seen some trends that are very troubling, such as the lower wages,” said Ralph Martire, executive director for the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability. “We need to sustain economic growth, the kind that provides good jobs, decent benefits and growing wages, but we aren’t seeing that.”

Vic Conrad avoided adding to the lower wage statistic, landing a new job for about 30 percent more money than what he earned before.

Conrad also said his divorce was finalized and he’s settling into his new apartment.

“Now, things are going in the right direction,” Conrad said.

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