Distillery Labs: Well, this was an obvious place to start. Tuesday was a very good day. After eight years (!!) of planning, design, redesign, and lots of hard work, we cut the ribbon on Distillery Labs. About 200 of our closest friends gathered for the celebration and the reality that good things really do come to those who wait (and work). It was great to see a cross-section of community and private sector leadership and a really great showing of our community of startup founders. We had people travel back to Peoria to celebrate, as well as friends from surrounding communities like Springfield and Bloomington. Lots of thank yous to all of our partners, but a special thank you to the US Economic Development Administration, the Illinois Capital Development Board and Illinois Innovation Network, the City of Peoria, Peoria County, Gilmore Foundation, and OSF Healthcare. I’d like to think the hard work is behind us – and I think it is – but we have plenty of work ahead to ensure that our startups and innovators are supported on their way to success. If you missed the ribbon cutting and want to check out Distillery Labs, drop me a line, and I’ll give you a personal tour.
June Jobs: It’s been a while since I’ve written anything about the monthly employment and jobs numbers released by the Illinois Department of Employment Security. After a pretty poor start to the year, with a pretty bleak drop in January, we’ve been creeping back up in the employment categories. We’ve seen two solid months of growth in the labor force, with just over 6,000 more in June 2024 than in April 2024. Increasing the labor force is usually a positive sign of some optimism as people jump back into the labor pool. Similarly, we saw a jump over that same period of 4,000 more people reporting as “employed.” Those numbers result in a somewhat misleading unemployment rate, which jumped from 4.9% in April to 6.0% in June. But remember, more people were working. That’s good.
The jobs side of the ledger improved, too. IDES estimates 1,100 more jobs in the Peoria MSA in June than in May (and an increase of 2,200 more between April and June). The big categorical jumps between May and June were Leisure & Hospitality (+700) and Mining and Construction (+400). But overall, we have less jobs estimated in June 2024 than June 2023, so there is room to grow. All the details here.
Tazewell County Broadband: Kathie is back at it! This time she is helping Tazewell County conduct a study of broadband needs and gaps. Via a study of both households and businesses, we hope to learn where there are opportunities to strengthen broadband services to ensure everyone has the proper access. COVID taught us a lot about the need for broadband connections and the lack of it in some places. Consequently, the federal and state governments are investing big dollars to level the playing field. If you are in Tazewell County, please complete this survey if you are a resident and this one if you have a business there.
Major Employers: One of the more frequent requests we get is to produce a list of the region’s largest employers. We get the requests from internal parties (governments, journalists) and external parties (site selectors, consultants). And it’s just a good practice for economic development organizations to keep track of and display their top employers. Companies looking at a region to locate want to either know the “company they’ll keep” or who their competition might be. But I gotta tell you, it is a hard list to maintain. There is no reliable external source of the data which really forces us to reach out to our employers individually. It had been a while since we worked on this, and via a true team effort, our list is updated and available here. We only list employers with 200 or more employees, and we do a bit of rounding since the number is really fluid on a day-to-day basis. If you see one missing, or that you think is wrong (higher or lower), drop me a note and we will correct it.
Have a great weekend.
Chris