Cook County Illinois has the largest population loss of any county in the nation. Chicago represents just over half of the population of Cook County.
Here is a graph I put together of the “Great Escape” from Illinois.
Highlights
- Between 2013 and 2016 the population of Illinois fell by 77,966. The population of Cook County fell by 36,739.
- Between 2001 and 2016 the population of Illinois rose by 313,084. The population of Cook County fell by 122,759.
- Starting in 2013, the “great escape” is in roughly equal numbers from Cook County and the rest of the state.
Job Highlights
On July 23 I noted Eight States Including Illinois Have Not Recovered Jobs Lost in Prior Recessions. The states are Alabama, Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, Ohio, and Wyoming.
Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan are still below employment levels set in 2000. Here is a new chart I created comparing Illinois to Michigan and Ohio.
At least Illinois is not last in every category.
Metro Area Unemployment: Which States Are in Reverse? Spotlight Illinois
- Illinois has 12 metro areas, none of which have unemployment rates below the national average.
- Illinois worsened between 1998 and 2007 and then again from 2007 to 2017.
- Neighboring states are all now better than Illinois
Illinois vs Neighboring States
For more details, please see Metro Area Unemployment: Which States Are in Reverse? Spotlight Illinois.
With each passing decade, the unemployment situation in Illinois has gotten worse.
This is not surprising. The state passed its first budget in three fiscal years, complete with massive tax hikes. The budget is required by Constitution to be balanced, but it isn’t.
An exodus of businesses and private citizens is underway. Reforms are desperately needed but none came with the passage of the budget.
Rauner 0-44
Governor Rauner is 0 for 44 in reforms he set out to accomplish. In fact, the corporate and personal tax hikes put the true score at -2 out of 44.
Cash-strapped cities suffer under prevailing wage laws and untenable pension promises.
Corporations suffer under the worst workers’ compensation laws in the nation.
Citizens suffer from the highest property taxes in the nation.
It is too late to save Illinois from insolvency. Rather than fix the problem, the new tax hikes will make matters worse.
Five Desperately Needed Reforms
- Municipal bankruptcy legislation
- Pension reform
- Right-to-Work legislation
- End of prevailing wage laws
- Workers’ compensation reform
Number one on my list of Illinois reforms is bankruptcy legislation. It is the only way out for numerous Illinois cities whose hands are tied by union-sponsored prevailing wage laws and pension plans.
Moody’s held off for now downgrading Illinois to junk status, but junk is baked into the cake sooner or later. The budget fixes nothing.
Related Articles
- Too Much, Too Little, Too Late: Junk Status for Illinois Coming Up
- Illinois Budget: What it Does and Doesn’t Do (Surprise Giveaway to Muni Bondholders?)
Also consider The Way Chicago “Works”: Graft, Corruption, Political Connections, Bribes, Unions.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Time for a departure tax.
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Or a claw back tax anyone leaving in the last 10 years …pay up
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California tried to tax the government pensions of retired state/local government workers moving out of state. Congress passed a law banning such a departure tax.
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They do not need a departure tax – they need a tax period – on excessive public pensions
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Reblogged this on John Barleycorn and commented:
Run away
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Illinois is simply ahead of all the other states. One by one, every state will follow the same path. The government no longer exists for the people. The people exist for the government.
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People with state and city pensions from Illinois: where do they tend to migrate to?
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Just a guess, but maybe states that don’t tax pension income? I see that Il doesn’t tax social security but what about pensions and withdrawals form 401(k) plans?
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Florida. No income tax. Lots of union retirees here.
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Florida, TX, AZ, Arkansas, MI, based on my personal survey. You would not believe how many people in southern AZ are from IL….
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Chicago homicides save moving costs.
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Colorado’s all full up! The Californians got here first.
Seriously though, the boom on the front range isn’t going to end well when the next drought cycle hits. There’s lots of land for building but not much water.
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From what I’ve heard, CA gets a very large amount of its water from the western slope of CO, so it won’t be a shortage of water, it will be a matter of getting it to the front range.
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Mish – If what you say is true and I do not doubt………… why in Heaven are you taking 2 years to pull the ripcord?
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I have explained numerous times.
I am mobile, My wife is not.
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Of Cook County’s 5 million souls how many are wage earners? How many pay taxes? Chicago tax base is leaving faster than the number 122,000 would suggest. High income taxpayers leave first. Mish is a straggler.
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I escaped Illinois in May of 1994 Mish, but back then it was a completely different kettle of fish.
I was contracting for National Manufacturing in Sterling – Rock Falls as a software engineer. Old mainframe guy is me. They had a vibrant business, we were re-designing their automated picking system. The main manufacturing plant right in the heart of town, next to the Rock River had a life of its own. Pounding machinery, busy as hell the car parking lot overflowing. On the outskirts of town was their fully automated processing plant, had a few tours out there – it was cutting edge stuff. About 50% of the town were mexican workers, working in the mills. Best ever authentic food I have ever tried.
Recently did a google earth of the place. The Rock River used to be lined with a whole bunch of manufacturing plants, today it looks like a deserted moonscape. National Manufacturing no longer exists. Unemployment now a major, major problem. I was so saddened to see the change. The place is now but a mere shell of itself. The quality of life has obviously plummeted.
Why did I leave – could not resist a new contract in Hawaii. However I will always hold a very special place in my heart for the wonderful people I worked with, the close knit community and the sense of well being that was obvious at first sight.
Time marches on, however progress is never guaranteed and to see this once wonderful place go to the dogs is almost heart breaking.
RIP – Illinois.
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I feel the same way about the employees at the Carrier plant in Huntington Indiana that got national attention during the elections. They worked so well as a team.
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B.C;
Joe B. III is teaching engineering at NIU. Stanley bought the whole mess and then closed it. That new factory sits empty on Rt. 30. Rock Falls has torn down all the old buildings and is developing a riverfront. On the other side of the bridge the old National building is empty but looks maintained. The Lawrence building across the street is a vandalized, Detroit looking shameful mess. Every window is broken etc.
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I have relatives in Chicago. They wouldn’t think of moving. Unless of course, maybe one gets shot!
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Great resource here based on IRS tax filings:
http://www.howmoneywalks.com/irs-tax-migration/
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No wall to keep people…
& their pocket books to be picked for the benefit of Illinois…
IN Illinois?
Sad.
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“It is too late to save Illinois from insolvency. Rather than fix the problem, the new tax hikes will make matters worse.”
They don’t want to fix the problem. They want to Kick the can as far as they possibly can.
My sales tax near L.A. just went from 8.75% to 9.25. I think there is another .25 coming. In a news story about it, they said some local areas are now over 10%. On KFI they were talking about a new gas tax increase of 65 cents that is supposed to add some 600 dollars a year in cost to the average driver. Governor Brown wants to spend some 3 billion dollars subsidizing electric car manufacturing.
Then there is that 400 billion dollar single payer health plan, which seems to be held back only by the speaker of the Assembly, to which i heard an ad by the California Nurses Association, urging people to call him to demand he stop blocking the bill.
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The gas tax can be mitigated by carpooling or driving as little as possible. Think of it as getting back at Jerry brown for this obvious cash grab. Wait until the 20 cent Diesel Tax kicks in and watch your grocery prices rise. By next spring CA consumers are going to be very unhappy.
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Nah, they’ll be smug and think how lucky they are not to be like the rest of the US.
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An interesting variation of the first graph is to graph the population of Illinois, minus the population of cook county. I computed it from the graph above, so it is only an approximation, but it shows a definite patter. The population of Illinois, excluding Cook Country, grows steadily, going up each and every year, and jumping a bit more in 2000 and 2010, which I presume is a census correction. By 2010 I presume that the handwriting was on the wall, and the smart people began to get out, because the population flattens, and then slowly begins to fall, and has fallen each year since 2012.
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Maybe it’s like (the city of )Detroit where people who can afford to move to the suburbs, leaving behind an ever more dysfunctional population in the city itself.
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The best part is that large numbers of taxpayers are leaving, much more than the numbers show, and their places are being taken by welfare seeking illegals and other immigrants.
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Cheer up, when enough people have left the remainder will be entitled to ‘Native Minority Status’ and specially segregated enclosures. Positive discrimination at its finest, all part and parcel of the collective American karma.
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Blame the people and not government. They have been electing democrats in power for years. They are just reaping what they have sown. The headline should be Republicans fleeing Illinois instead of population decline.
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Outside of Cook County it is the reddest of red states. When Cook or more precisely Chicago is pumped full of third world immigrants, illegals and a million on welfare the Democrats have a hammer lock on the rest of the state with which they have nothing in common. I hope to get a referendum going that would allow some way to split the other 100 counties from Cook and DuPage counties. RINO loser HQ is DuPage county and they are next to Cook so it is a perfect solution.
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Build a wall ,that will keep them in.
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I lived in a 500,000 population city ( west coast ) that experienced a slight decline in population during the late 1980s & early 1990s. Poor civic leadership
was root cause of the decline. Lessons Learned:
1) The people who leave are the most productive
2) The people who arrive are the least productive
3) It’s a vicious cycle that is impossible to stop
4) Get out asap. The longer one clings to the hope things will get better, the fewer degrees of freedom you will have when you finally admit it’s time to leave. Your home loses relative value. Your kids get shortchanged at school. Your employer is painted with the brush of ‘failure’ when you look to relocate. Of my close friends, those who
stayed are struggling to get by. Those of us that left have prospered.
30 years later of mostly booming economy is the region, this 500,000 population city continues its stagnation. It’s mind boggling that decline once started continues unabated. The regional
economy booms and right in the middle of this region – stagnation.
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Good advice. Now I have seen stagnant or undeveloped cities/regions boom, but unless you are satisfied with them as they are, it would be foolish to wait around hoping yours will take off, at least unless you have some sound knowledge to the contrary. If you cannot make a go of it, few others will either, and fewer still will dedicate their time to try to make sure others have opportunity without it being self serving and redistributive at the same time.
There are just too many other places where success can be pencilled in, best to locate somewhere that is clearly underway, or stable, and avoid those that have obviously peaked as they tend to accumulate a lot of their own trash and can fall from grace quite rapidly.
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we had a 40th HS renunion recently and it was crystal clear. Those who stayed really suffered economically. Those who left prospered.
The city isn’t some rust belt hollowed out hell hole like Akron-Canton. It looks on the surface to be a nice West Coast bigger city in smack dab in the middle of a booming regional economy. Housing prices are a good measure:
Typical middle class house
stagnant city
1990 – 350,000
2017 – 650,00
whoppee everything is great ! until one looks at relative prices in cities next door
1990 – 300,000
2017 – 1,800,000
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Sounds like it is haunted… by admin ? Some places I know just took a wrong turn and after that no one wants to know even if they have potential , superficial in many ways but they become isolated and spiral till no one has the energy to deal with the state of them, and no one knows what the place is supposed to be . Give a dog a bad name.
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it’s just bad civic leadership – stupid vanity projects by city hall; bloated pensions; the usual suspects. It’s not a one time thing; it’s deeply structural.
Somehow municipal employement has risen by 45% in last 30 years, while population has stayed constant.
It’s a big geography, vast stretches of solid middle class neighborhoods ( Ozzie and Harriet style ) are now inhabited by households only marginally employed. The wealthy areas steadily shrink year by year.
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Those who flee Cook County should be entitled to refugee status for humanitarian reasons. Persecuting a person for his or her ability to produce is just as bad as persecuting someone for their political or religious beliefs. In fact, it’s worse.
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Hey Mish…you have any data on how many/what percentage of government pension checks issued to Illinois retirees are sent out of state? I think that would be fascinating to find out as it’s literally exported taxpayer wealth. I’ve searched but can’t find any info on it.
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Oh…and a total annual sum would be obviously interesting too. It’s gotta be HUUUGE.
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I do not have any data on that – I will see if I can find any
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Thank you…I have tried encouraging researchers/journalists in training here at the U I work at to try and dig it up but no one seems as interested. I just can’t seem to find access to a database with that info. Surprise (sarc).
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Hard to get info like that when so many Democrat hires in Illinois government can’t read.
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yes good I have relatives in Chicago. They wouldn’t think of moving. Unless of course, maybe one gets shot
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Illinois is not likely to get any of its 5 needed reforms. Neither is California. The Terminator actually tried to get pension reform done, which would only have applied to new employees, but was opposed by Democrats and not supported by Republicans. It failed at the ballot box in about 2005. For years, the #1 priority of Republican politicians was trying to stop gay marriage and in the end, they failed at that. Now they are practically irrelevant in the state.
Even bankruptcy did not make it possible for the City of Vallejo, CA to slash pension benefits. Instead, the city laid off some employees and did not replace other workers when they left. Later, the voters were persuaded to pass a sales tax increase.
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To know a cities future, know it’s demographics
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Reblogged this on World4Justice : NOW! Lobby Forum..
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Most of the people who left were low income and African Americans. The city of Chicago is being transformed in to a shiny city on a hill. Chicago is like the San Francisco of the Midwest. We are going through a huge building boom. Right now, 57 luxury apartment buildings are under construction.
In the city core lots of Millennials are moving in. Whereever Millennials go, jobs follow. Maybe my eyes are deceiving me?
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Since Cook County was second in the world only to Paris with 3,000 millionaires leaving last year I would say you are seeing one thing but not seeing another. A bunch of paper shufflers or tattoo artists moving Downtown into overpriced real estate is less than meaningless if Madigan drives John Deere or Caterpillar, ADM, Walgreens, Boeing, among others out of the state by his refusal to concede business has needs to meet if you want their jobs and taxes.
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Mish, I don’t recall, do you still live in Illinois? If so, why?
-a longtime reader
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Explained many times
I am mobile – my wife has a high-level jobs and she isn’t
Still we have plans as I also mentioned many times
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