McHenry Times

State Sen. Dan Duffy (R-Dist. 26) recently released a statement citing Internal Revenue Service data on the impact of the state's struggling economy on jobs.

“We continue to ignore the fact Illinois businesses and residents are fleeing Illinois in search of better opportunities,” Duffy said. “We need to make Illinois competitive again and bring back the millions in revenue we have lost.”

The senator said the IRS found that the state, based on the latest data, is losing one person every seven minutes in September, taking an estimated $50,000 in taxable income with each person.

The state lost 6,900 jobs last month, and manufacturing jobs have been lost in eight out of the first nine months of 2015. Putting the decline in perspective, Duffy said the current number of nonfarm jobs in Illinois is the same as it was in July 1998, despite 5,600 people joining the labor force in the month of September alone. The state also has the worst recession recovery rate of any state in the country, with 200,000 fewer people working today than just before the recession began in November 2007.

Duffy said the Republican Party is committed to structural reforms of the system to keep people and tax revenue in Illinois and to fix the current budget crisis.