Illinois employers announced fewer large layoffs in April
April saw nearly half the large layoffs March brought, and showed few major layoffs in the manufacturing sector.
Reported layoffs in Illinois lessened during the month of April, with only 450 jobs lost in mass layoffs from five different companies. Three other companies that had filed layoff notices in previous months indicated they would be making a total of 40 permanent and six temporary additional cuts in personnel.
The data come from the Illinois Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN, report, which is limited in scope to large layoffs that occur in Illinois. WARN report data are not necessarily reflective of the general economy.
Layoffs captured by the WARN report have declined over the past several months. Roughly 900 employees were laid off in March, while February saw 1,680, and 1,370 employees received notice of layoffs in January.
Close to half of the job losses in April were in the greater Chicago area. The owner of the Berghoff Restaurant in Chicago announced that she is selling the business to her brother. In the process, Berghoff is laying off 156 workers, but they all will have an opportunity to apply to be rehired. LYNX Services LLC in Buffalo Grove announced 55 layoffs, and UTi Integrated Logistics in Aurora announced 31.
Other layoffs came at Kmart in Bradley, which laid off 125 employees, and Dynegy Midwest Generation LLC in Alton, which laid off 83. Olin Corp. in East Alton filed a supplemental notice of an additional 34 layoffs, and Computershare Inc. in Chicago reported six more jobs lost. Nippon Sharyo Manufacturing LLC in Rochelle announced temporary layoffs for six positions.
Illinois had a loss of 25 manufacturing jobs per workday on net in 2015, according to federal data. So far, Illinois has not seen the type of major manufacturing job losses in 2016 that are captured by the WARN report. Only six came in the entire month of April as part of large layoffs, with Nippon Sharyo Manufacturing LLC in Rochelle announcing those as temporary layoffs, adding to the 100 layoffs the company announced in September 2015. Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean the manufacturing sector is thriving, but at least large layoffs and closures were down in April.
Notwithstanding April’s slowdown in manufacturing layoffs and job losses in other industries, the unfortunate underlying trend revealed in WARN reports from the first three months of 2016 is that blue-collar and working-class jobs are showing up more frequently in mass layoffs. Illinois needs robust jobs growth so that everyone gets a fair opportunity to work hard and rise in his or her profession.