Unemployment rates are down compared to this time last year in the Peoria metropolitan area.
The Peoria area's unemployment rate this past May was 5.5 percent. That's down from 6.4 percent in April, and down significantly from 15.4 percent in May 2020, as the state was emerging from Governor JB Pritzker's stay-at-home order.
That's a trend also replicated in all 102 Illinois counties, and all fourteen metropolitan areas in the state.
The area has added 11,000 new jobs back in the year-over-year look at the local labor market.
The largest growth sectors are leisure and hospitality, education and health services, and retail trade.
