Illinois’ unemployment rate ticked up to 6.6 percent in April as more people continued to join the labor force but didn’t immediately find jobs.

The state added 5,400 jobs last month, but more than half of the growth was in temporary jobs or through employment agencies, the Illinois Department of Employment Security said in a news release Thursday announcing the preliminary April data. The portion of jobs that are full-time is lower than it was before the Great Recession began.

The state’s unemployment rate, which has been increasing for six months in a row, was up from 6.5 percent in March and up from 5.9 percent a year before. It is far higher than the U.S. average of 5 percent, which stayed steady from the prior month.

Illinois, which had a worse jobless rate than the national average during the recession, has been among the slower states to recover.

Illinois’ unemployment rate had been falling steadily during the economic recovery until it hit 5.8 percent last summer, which is around when the state’s labor force participation started to increase as more people started to look for work. The labor force participation rate, which measures people who are working, out of work and looking for work, has risen to 66.2 percent from a low of 64.5 percent early last year. At its pre-recession peak, the state’s labor force participation was 68.7 percent.

There were 439,400 unemployed people in the state last month, about 56,000 more than the year before. When the state hit its peak unemployment rate of 11.2 percent at the start of 2010, there were 743,000 unemployed people.

Before the recession officially hit in December 2007, Illinois’ unemployment rate was 5.5 percent.

The unemployment rate counts people who are out of work and looking for work regardless of whether they are receiving benefits, but does not count those who have given up looking for work.

In addition to more people re-entering the labor force, sluggish job growth is causing the state’s unemployment rate to rise, the Department of Economic Security said. Illinois added 67,500 jobs in the past year ending in April, a growth rate of 1.1 percent, but that’s lower than the 1.9 percent job growth rate nationwide.

The sectors that posted the most job gains in Illinois over the past year were in leisure and hospitality, and educational and health services. Manufacturing, information services and financial activities had the largest declines.

Illinois remains 43,000 jobs short of its peak employment level reached in September 2000 and is one of just three states in the country that have not regained peak employment, Illinois Department of Commerce Director Sean McCarthy said in the release.

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