The education sector has accounted for a large portion of jobs that have recently been cut by the local government in the state of Illinois. The information on these cuts was recently provided by the United States Census Bureau. The number of employees in the state of Illinois who happened to be working in different school districts was lower in 2011 than it was in the previous year of 2010. In fact, there was a decline of around 2.5 percent of employees within these districts over the span of just one year. Even part-time employment had decreased a bit as well. Back in 2010, the local government payrolls were at about $2.29 billion but in 2011 there was an increase and the total number of payrolls totaled up to about $2.27 billion.

Education takes up a large portion of the local government employment for the state of Illinois. Back in 2010, the number of individuals employed within the education sector was 299,647 but that number had decreased within the span of a year by around 10,000 jobs. This means that many employees may have been laid off and left without work. The part-time employment in education, however, did increase from 2010 to 2011 with a total of 90,190 employees for 2011. All of the information about the number of employees working for the local government was provided by the Census Bureau and its Annual Survey of Public Employment & Payroll, providing insight on what is going on in the area in terms of the number of individuals employed and on the payroll. The survey provides information on the local and state government for those who are employed both full-time and part-time as well.

For the nation as a whole, the local governments employed nearly 12 million full-time employees throughout 2011 which was a decrease of around 204,781 employees from the previous year. Local government education employed around 7.04 million individuals in the United States alone, which is relatively close to the previous year when around 7.4 million individuals were employed within the local government education for 2010. Within the span of one year from March of 2010 up until March of 2011, the vast majority of states in the nation saw a decrease in the number of full-time employees for the local government. Arizona dealt with the largest decline from the previous year, which happened to be a decline of around 7 percent. Several other states in the country saw declines in employment of around 4 percent or more from the previous year.