State officials say unemployment in all 12 Illinois metro areas dropped in May, and all but three of those regions added jobs or were unchanged.
The Illinois Department of Employment Security put out its monthly metro and county-level unemployment stats Thursday. The department says the biggest decreases last month were in Peoria, Rockford, Danville and the Kankakee-Bradley area.
Rockford remains the area with the highest unemployment rate at 10.7 percent. But that's down from 14.2 percent a year earlier.
Unemployment in the Chicago-Joliet-Naperville area was 9.8 percent in May. That's down from 10.4 percent over the past year.
The Peoria area added 5,300 jobs over the past year as manufacturers such as Caterpillar Inc. continued to bounce back from the recession.
