Welfare Sign-ups Beat Job Creation 2-to-1 in Illinois

For every job created in the state of Illinois, two people sign-up for food stamps—not exactly an encouraging statistic. The state ranked ‘dead last’ across America for job growth in 2014, according to the Illinois Policy.

Not only is the economically-challenged state failing to create positions in the private sector, it actually lost nearly 6,000 jobs between January and July of this year. Since the financial crisis of 2008, Illinois has almost 300,000 fewer workers: 

The pace at which Illinois has been creating jobs is simply not good enough for Illinois families, and policy mistakes, such as the historic 2011 tax hikes, have made it worse. Illinois has gained only 240,000 jobs since the bottom of the recession, while food-stamp enrollment has gone up by 420,000.

To visualize just how grim these numbers are for the future of the Prairie State, take a look at this:

Hardly the way to economic prosperity and self-reliance.