Ken Berwitz
The top-producing states of the Midwest’s manufacturing powerhouse are Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin. But Illinois is the only one of the Great Lakes states where government workers dramatically outnumber manufacturing workers, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
As of June 2015, Illinois had only 574,000 factory workers, compared with nearly 750,000 state and local government workers. That means Illinois had only 3 manufacturing workers for every 4 state and local government workers.
Simply put, workers in Illinois are more likely to find a job in government than in manufacturing production. But in the other Great Lakes states, workers are more likely to be able to find a manufacturing opportunity than a government job. The ratio of manufacturing workers to government workers puts Illinois at 0.77 manufacturing workers per government worker, compared to 1.02 manufacturing workers per government worker in Ohio, 1.11 in Michigan, 1.23 in Wisconsin and 1.31 in Indiana.
