Out-migration

Gov. Pritzker wants to be a national hero for the “resistance,” but there’s a problem: Illinois is far from the influential powerhouse he portrays it to be. Illinois has been bleeding people relative to the rest of the country for decades, and that can be seen clearly by the state’s collapse in Congressional representation.

A review of U.S. Census population data since 2020 reveals a perfect demographic storm that’s likely to worsen Illinois’ downward spiral. Illinois has experienced the worst collapse in youth aged 18 and under; the 6th-worst drop in working age residents; and a jump in the elderly’s share of population. All three foreshadow a vicious cycle of higher taxes and taxpayer flight.

Illinoisans in 33 counties have become so frustrated that they feel their only way out is to separate. Illinois’ leaders ignore these residents at their own peril. But ignore is precisely what’s happened, and that’s opened the door for Indiana Republicans to woo Illinois’ disenfranchised counties.

“We haven’t had population loss.” It’s a claim Gov. JB Pritzker and his allies have made before, and it’s preposterous. Unfortunately, they get away with it because the media and many of our supposed watchdogs let them.

Fresh data from the Census Bureau shows the continued loss of Illinoisans due to domestic out-migration: Illinois netted a loss of 93,247 residents to other states in 2023. Those losses are on top of the net 116,000 and 141,000 Illinoisans who fled in 2022 and 2021, respectively.

Wirepoints yearly out-migration research shows Illinois’ net loss of households to other states occurs in every single income and age bracket. What often gets the most attention is the flight of older, wealthier residents to other states. But what’s most concerning is the hollowing out of the state’s future – the loss of Illinois’ young, wealthy, upwardly-mobile, taxpaying millennials.

Long-time readers of Wirepoints’ IRS out-migration work will know Illinois is a net loser of households in every single income and age bracket the IRS tracks. Now a new cut of the data shows Illinois ranks near-last nationally in almost every one of the brackets, revealing just how repellent the state’s policies are for all Illinoisans.

Illinois’ population and outmigration losses keep piling up. The latest, freshest IRS data for tax filing year 2022 shows Illinois netted a loss of 87,000 residents to other states. And they took more than $10 billion in AGI with them. Illinois went zero for six vs. its neighboring states and lost people to 40 states overall.

If America’s big states are any indication, it’s the better managed, less expensive states that are winning out over the government-centric, high-cost states. Illinois, New York and California continued their streak as the nation’s biggest losers of residents and their wealth to other states. North Carolina, Texas and Florida remained the nation’s big winners.

Take a couple of minutes to analyze a recent U.S. Census map of the nation’s Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA) and you’ll find the nation’s two extremes in population change.

It was another year of population losses for Chicago and the overwhelming majority of Illinois cities in 2023. Chicago’s population loss of 8,208 was the nation’s third-largest in the country, behind only New York and Philadelphia’s.

We reported recently how Chicago’s metro area lost population again for the third year in a row. Those same U.S. Census estimates show that population losses across the state remain widespread: 93 of Illinois’ 102 counties have experienced population loss since 2020.