United Airlines will hire up to 3,000 employees in Chicago to staff and maintain the new, bigger planes they are buying to replace aging aircrafts.

Chicago-based United Airlines is ordering 270 new Boeing and Airbus aircrafts for its fleet. As the largest order in the airline’s history, it is the first step in an investment process that’s expected to add more than 25,000 new jobs nationwide, including as many as 3,000 in the Chicago area alone.

Making video games is a popular hobby, and it provides artists a chance to showcase their incredible talent. Champaign plays host to Volition Entertainment, formerly known as Parallax Software. The company has been around since the early ‘90s and is a source of pride in Champaign. It employs roughly 200 people and is still going strong.

According to a new set of federal employment data. The city of Chicago and the metropolitan area is now growing at a faster rate than the nation.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly survey of households and employers found Illinois added nearly 100,000 jobs from June 2018 to June 2019. Chicago’s job-growth gain percentage was 1.8, with the national average coming in at a 1.5 percent increase. The growth in the past year tops other comparable Midwestern cities such as Indianapolis and Cleveland. Cites such as New York and Los Angeles reported growth at 1.2 and 1.4 percent.

Illinois is home to one of the nation’s best workplaces for manufacturing and production, according to a new report from Fortune magazine.

Fona International, a Geneva-based food and beverage manufacturer, ranks third on Fortune’s 2018 list of “The 20 Best Workplaces for Manufacturing and Production.”

Founded in 1987, Fona employs more than 200 people in Illinois. Among Fona employees, 96 percent say the company is a great place to work.

Fortune’s rankings are compiled by surveying employees from companies throughout the country on their experiences in the workplace.

Illinois ranks fifth in the nation in net tech employment according to a new report from CompTIA CompTIA, one of the world’s leading technology industry associations.

Tech employment in Illinois grew by an estimated 4,040 jobs in 2017, contributing an estimated $48.7 billion to the state’s economy, according to the company’s Cyberstates Report

The added workers put Illinois’ tech industry total at 437,200 or 6.8 percent of the state’s total workforce. The average tech industry wage in Illinois is $100,580, compared to the state's average private sector annual wage of $57,360.