Caterpillar executives to join the net 160,000 Illinoisans who have left for Texas since 2000 – Wirepoints

By: Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner

Caterpillar’s move of its headquarters from Illinois to Texas encapsulates the lopsided migration between the two states. There’s only one way to describe it. Illinois, with its fiscal, economic and governance problems, is the big loser to a state with low taxes, less regulations and fiscal stability. 

Not only does the IRS report that Illinois loses thousands of taxpayers and their dependents to Texas every year, but its data also shows Illinoisans who move there are far wealthier than the Texans who move into Illinois. 

First, the big losses of people. Since 2000, more than 395,000 Illinoisans (tax filers and their dependents) have made the move to Texas, but only about 236,000 Texans have made the reverse journey, according to the IRS’ annual migration data.

That’s left Illinois with a net loss to the Lone Star state over the last two decades of nearly 160,000 residents – equal to about the population of Naperville. 

Illinois’ net loss to Texas averages about 7,500 residents per year, with the most recent year costing Illinois nearly 11,000 residents. We break it down year by year in the graphic below.

Texas is the second biggest net winner of Illinoisans after Florida. The Sunshine State has won a net 193,000 residents from Illinois since 2000, based on the IRS taxpayer data. That’s the equivalent of losing an Aurora over those 20 years.

Overall, Illinois has lost a net 1.37 million people (tax filers and their dependents) to other states since 2000. Only New York and Alaska have lost more people than Illinois when measured on a percent of population basis. Wirepoints covered Illinois’ record 2019-2020 losses here and its total loses over the past two decades here.

Now, the money. The tax filers who left Illinois for Texas in the latest year reported by the IRS had, on average, adjusted gross incomes of more than $106,000. In contrast, the Texans who moved into Illinois earned on average just $71,000. 

That’s a record gap of $35,000 in 2020.

Count on the CAT personnel who do move to Texas to make that income gap even bigger. The top five CAT executives alone took in $16 million in salaries and $55 million in total compensation last year, according to Salary.com. A total of 230 Illinois Caterpillar jobs are impacted, though it’s not clear how many will move to Texas.

The bottom line is this: Illinois is one of the nation’s big losers, with 18,000 in population lost over the last decade according to the 2020 U.S. Census. While Illinois was shrinking, Texas grew by more than 4 million people.

The loss of Caterpillar is yet another sign that the state’s taxpayer subsidies and a devotion to “woke” causes can’t make Illinois attractive to businesses. 

What’s actually attractive are low taxes, less regulation, fiscal stability and general trustworthiness. Until Illinois embraces those policies, big names like Caterpillar and Boeing will continue to join the more than one million residents who have fled the state over the past two decades.

Read more from Wirepoints:

• $535 billion over two decades: Understanding the full impact of Illinois’ lost taxpayers and the income they took with them
• New 2020 IRS migration data reveals Florida is the biggest winner, New York is the biggest loser, in the competition for people and their wealth
• The Covid bailouts can paper over Illinois’ fiscal mess, but they can’t hide Illinois’ GDP, employment and population failures
• Illinois needs a multiyear restructuring plan to stop residents from fleeing