Obama's White House job summit provides glimpse of Illinois economic future

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden hosted a jobs summit at the White House December 3rd seeking new ideas to reinvigorate the U.S. economy and give a ‘report card” on how the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA) has performed.  The event also provided some indicators about the near-term future of the Illinois economy.

To put the purpose of the event in context, Vice President Biden opened the summit by comparing where the economy was at the start of the Obama Administration to the present.  According to Biden, in January of this year, 740,000 Americans lost their jobs and another 640,000 joined the unemployed ranks in the short month of February 2009.  Although the numbers have been questioned, the White House touts that to-date, the ARRA has helped create either 600,000 jobs or 1.6 million jobs, depending on an interpretation that even Vice President Biden left open.   Biden also stated that in January 2009, the economy was shrinking at a rate of 6 percent, but is now growing at a rate of 3 percent. 

More importantly for Illinoisans, Biden said, “the items in the act which have the biggest impact are yet to come.  Within the next two weeks to a month, another roughly $13 billion is going to be announced rolling out in terms of both investments in broadband and high-speed rail, and competitive education and infrastructure.  In fact, the money spent on clean water, renewable energy, superfund sites, and much more, is going to more than double -- it's going to more than double in this quarter and will maintain a similar pace for the next two quarters.”

To date, there has been more than $5 billion in ARRA investment in Illinois.  Per category, as of November 15, 2009, the totals are:
 

Information is also available on where the Illinois ARRA investments were made geographically via this link.   It should also be noted that per the White House, the ARRA is expected to help create/save 148,000 jobs in Illinois over a two year period.  The ARRA funds are being used to leverage the $31 billion Illinois Jobs Now economic development initiative that Governor Pat Quinn's office projects will create 439,000 jobs in Illinois over six years.

 The most telling statement may have come from President Obama, who said, “while I believe that government has a critical role in creating the conditions for economic growth, ultimately true economic recovery is only going to come from the private sector.  We don't have enough public dollars to fill the hole of private dollars that was created as a consequence of the crisis.  It is only when the private sector starts to reinvest again, only when our businesses start hiring again and people start spending again and families start seeing improvement in their own lives again that we're going to have the kind of economy that we want.  That's the measure of a real economic recovery.”