With the talk about a potential nationwide recession spreading, you may be wondering where Illinois stands. A University economics professor said that Illinois is more likely to avoid an upcoming recession.

Dr. J. Fred Giertz is the interim head of the Department of Economics who believes that Illinois is less suceptible than the rest of the nation for three main reasons.

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“One: the fact that our housing market is probably not as vulnerable as some other places,” Geirtz said. “The second thing is that we’re not as deeply affected by the decline in the automobile industry like Michigan. And the final thing is the travel industry.”

Another factor that is having a slight impact is the increased demand for ethanol. However, Giertz said that only corn farmers, as opposed to ethanol manufacturers, will benefit.

“A lot of places who are planning to build ethanol plants are backing out now because selling ethanol is not nearly as good deal because corn has gone up in price a lot and it’s very costly to do that so being a farmer and producing corn is great, building a new ethanol plant now probably is not,” Giertz said.

Giertz said it’s difficult to know if a country’s in a recession until several months after it’s started.

Recesssions are notoriously hard to predict, but the country has seen one every ten years since 1980. Illinois has fared well every other year, and if the pattern persists this year looks promising.