You may not know this but in the state of Illinois the Secretary of State is actually a really big deal. As a matter of fact most of us do not even have a real idea of what the Secretary of State actually does in our home state. So, how big of a deal is that office? Well according to information released on the site, “As the second-largest constitutional office, the Office of the Secretary of State is visited by more Illinois residents than any other in state government. The office generates approximately $2 billion in annual revenue with about $1.2 billion a year designated for state highway construction funds.”

That is a fairly hefty job, but it is on that the current Secretary of State, Jesse White, is hoping that he can do with a lot fewer workers. The office is getting ready to send out layoff notice to 90 of the workers in the office. The job cuts are all part of a newly reduced state budget for the current fiscal year. In addition the office is losing a significant number of positions to attrition. The company is expected not to hire for about 160 currently open positions under the new budget for the year.

The layoff notices were sent by mail, and issued officially on Thursday and Friday of last week. So while it is likely that some workers have already received their notices it is also likely that some workers will not be finding out they are going to be out of a job until their mail comes this afternoon or even tomorrow.

Since the job cuts are going to impact 90 workers they are more than enough to qualify as a mass layoff action. For those of you who are not familiar with the idea of a mass layoff action, here is a look at how the federal government defines the term, “Monthly mass layoff numbers are from establishments which have at least 50 initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed against them during a 5-week period. Extended mass layoff numbers (issued quarterly) are from a subset of such establishments—where private sector nonfarm employers indicate that 50 or more workers were separated from their jobs for at least 31 days.” When a mass layoff action comes into play some extra rules must be obeyed. Under the current federal law the employer, in this case the state of Illinois, must give the workers some extra time to prepare for the job losses. This is done to help lessen the blow to the surrounding communities, which can in some cases be serious and even trigger waves of echo layoffs.

This may explain why layoff notices were going out this week for a layoff that will not take place until the 1^st of July. It is on that date that the new budget for the new fiscal year will go into effect and the now surpluses workers will have to get off of the payroll and onto the unemployment line.