Long-winded constitutions

Alabama leads the nation in constitutional wordiness. Its Constitution adopted in 1901 has an estimated 174,000 words.

Texas (naturally) is next with a 62,000-word Constitution dating back to 1876.

Illinois' 1970 Constitution with only 13,500 words is definitely one of your newer gas saving models.

Vermonters, however, lead the nation in terseness. Constitution-wise they have managed since 1793 on only 6,600 words.

All these word counts are estimates.

Source: The Book of the States, 1986-87 edition.

You gits what you pays for

A recent report rating state economies says that heavily unionized, more regulated and highly taxed mid-Atlantic and northeastern states are prospering because they invested in an educated workforce and an infrastructure of roads, bridges, airports, water supply and sewage systems.

The report was written by the Corporation for Enterprise Development in Washington, D.C., and was sponsored by 13 business foundations and labor groups.

Robert Friedman, president of the corporation said a business index should try to measure "widely shared, long-term economic prosperity," not "the cost of everything and the value of very little."

State ratings based on 'widely shared prosperity'

Tennessee got straight F's and so did Alabama, according to the Corporation for Enterprise Development.

The Massachussetts economy made straight A's.

Illinois averaged out to D+.

You pays for what you gits

Selwin Price, a partner in Grant Thorton, a Chicago-based management accounting firm which issues its own state manufacturing climate ratings, says that he was unimpressed with the report because it was done by professors and economists who "never had to meet a payroll in their lives." Price believes that the report undercounts the importance of tax and wage levels, unionization and workstoppages. "You find me a manufacturer who isn't vitally concerned with those issues, and I'll eat their study page by page," he said.

Source: Reported in The Sacramento Bee, Thursday March 19, 1987.

State ratings based on 'meeting a payroll'

Grant Thornton ranks states in five major categories using 22 factors based on what manufacturing associations across the nation consider important. If you convert the state rankings in Grant Thornton's 1986 report to grades:

South Dakota got an A. Generally, the Southwest and the Southeast did best. Tennessee earned a B +. Massachussetts came up with a C. Illinois got a D +.

Source: The Seventh Annual Study of the General Manufacturing Climate of the 48 Contiguous States. Grant Thornton. Chicago, 1986. A new study will be out this June.

New collar, low dollar

A computer programmer earning $25,000 per year (top of the range) earns 45 percent less in real terms than the typical steelworker earned at U.S. Steel Corp. 's South Works in Chicago in 1979.

Programmers are lucky

Data entry workers, who make up 30 percent of the computer industry and are mostly women, earned $14,000 on the average last year.

Data entry workers count their blessings

According to unpublished statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Employment Security, the number of people in the Chicago area who were employed part-time involuntarily doubled to 149,000 between 1979 and 1985.

Full-time jobs increased by only 52,000 during the same period.

Source: Merrill Goozner. "What ails post-industrial Chicago?" Crain's Chicago Business. October 27-November 2, 1986.

Temporary assembly line workers are smiling

They are not standing in line for unemployment checks. Nationwide only 33 percent of unemployed people received unemployment benefits in any given month last year. That was the lowest level in the program's 52-year history.

Unemployed Illinoisans see a silver lining

About 31 percent of the people out of work in Illinois got unemployment benefits on an average month last year. That is slightly below the national median and leaves about 320,000 Illinoisans a month without benefits. But don't knock it.

Southern comfort

Fewer than one in four unemployed people got benefits in Alabama, Arizona, Florida. Kentucky. Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas on an average month last year. In Virginia only 15.9 percent got benefits.

(Northern states where the odds for getting unemployment benefits were less than one in four on an average month last year are Indiana, New Hampshire and South Dakota.)

Source: Center on Budget and Policy

Washington, D.C.

Keeping on keeping on

The general funds balance at the end of March was $185.818 million, and the average daily available balance was $140.423 million.

Source: Illinois Comptroller's Office.

Unemployment rates

The national seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in March was 6.6 percent down from 6.7 percent in February. In Illinois the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate stayed at 7.4 percent where it has been since November.

In March there were 5.620 million people in the state's civilian labor force. Of these 5.186 million people had jobs and 434,000 were looking for work. The drop in the labor force and in employment was due to the temporary furlough of 3,650 workers because of retooling of the Chrysler plant in Belvidere and its ripple effect on suppliers. The furloughs will continue until mid-July with production at full capacity expected in mid-October.

Final January unemployment rate in the state's major metro areas were:

Aurora-Elgin, 7.2 percent.

Bloomington-Normal. 5.7 percent.

Champaign-Urbana-Rantoul. 5.3 percent.

Chicago 7.2 percent.

Quad Cities (Illinois sector), 10.6 percent

Decatur, 10.6 percent.

Joliet, 8.2 percent.

Kankakee, 10.0 percent.

Lake County, 5.3 percent

Peoria, 9.4 percent.

Rockford, 8.9 percent.

Springfield, 6.3 percent.

St. Louis (Illinois sector). 10.5 percent.

Source: Department of Employment Security.

Margaret S. Knoepfle