Illinois Is Not Growing: A Comprehensive Look At Recent Claims To The Contrary – Wirepoints

By: Mark Glennon*

In this column we look thoroughly at new claims that Illinois is growing, not shrinking. For readers less interested in the details, main points are boldfaced.

The new claims are now widespread among Illinois’ ruling politicians and some of the media. They are based entirely on one new document from the United States Census Bureau. Some examples of what has is being said:

“These latest numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau show that Illinois is now a state on the rise with a growing population,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker said in a statement.

Illinois’ population decline “has apparently turned out to be a widely believed myth,” wrote columnist Rich Miller.

There’s a “ridiculous narrative” Pritzker’s Chief of Staff Ana Caprara told the Chicago Sun-Times, “that we have been declining in population and people have been moving out of the state, when exactly the opposite was true.”

It’s time to “start telling the truth” Illinois House Speaker Chris Welch says. “People are actually finding Illinois to be a place to live, work and play. The numbers show it.”

“The population of Illinois is growing,” a Marketwatch headline says flatly.

In truth, not one of those statements is validated by the new census document. To the contrary, all available evidence continues to indicate that Illinois population has declined significantly in recent years and that the decline has been accelerating. That direct evidence includes hard migration numbers from the Internal Revenue Service that just this week once again showed that Illinois taxpayers are fleeing.

First, first some background:

The new document causing the stir was released last week by the Census Bureau and is called a Post Enumeration Survey, or PES. A PES is a sample-based analysis done after every ten-year census to try to identify likely undercounts and overcounts in the census. The census is based on a simple count as required by law, which is widely known to sometimes be off materially. The purpose of the PES is to guide the Census Bureau in its next ten-year count by focusing more closely where the PES indicates earlier probable errors. The PES does not change the official census count.

The most recent decennial census concluded that Illinois’s population as of April 1, 2020 was 12,812,508, a decrease of about 18,000 people from the 2010 census. The new PES, indicates that was probably an undercount and that Illinois’ population actually increased by about 250,000 or 1.97% since 2010, which, if true, would put the population at about 13 million.

Even if the PES is right, consider how irrelevant that is to what’s important — where Illinois population has been going in recent years, particularly its taxpayers. Focus instead on the direct, more current evidence:

For starters, both the census and the PES are now over two years old and say nothing about what has happened since April 1, 2020. That date is right about when violent crime skyrocketed, including the 2020 riots in Chicago that summer, which one can reasonably think is contributing to flight from the state. Direct evidence of what has happened since April 2020 indicates accelerating flight from Illinois, which we will get to below. That evidence includes the number of Illinois taxpayers and their dependents, which a new report shows sank in 2020 at the second highest rate on record, continuing a surging trend of fleeing taxpayers.

The direct evidence also includes annual estimated population losses from the Census Bureau itself, particularly the 2021 estimate, which showed Illinois’ biggest annual estimated loss yet – 114,000 people, almost one percent of the state in a single year between July 1 2020 and June 30, 2021. The PES does not purport to change that 2021 annual estimate. And don’t think those estimates have proved to be too inaccurate to consider. We will get to that.

It’s particularly absurd for the Pritzker Administration to be claiming part of the credit for supposed population growth. In his statement, he said, “I ran for governor on a promise to be our state’s best chief marketing officer and reverse the trend of outmigration we’ve seen over the past few decades. These latest numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau show that Illinois is now a state on the rise with a growing population.” But he took office only 15 months before the date of the census that he now claims shows improvement thanks to him. Does anybody really believe that his efforts made much of a difference in the ten-year population story?

Now, what happened within the ten-year period in which population supposedly grew? Neither the census nor the PES says anything about that. For that reason, and because of the passage of the two years, you can say at a minimum and with absolute certainty that claims Illinois “is growing” or grew during any recent years have no basis.

Think of it this way: There’s an elm tree in the front of my neighbor’s house that grew between 2010 and 2020. But it sure has been falling apart since 2017 when the Dutch Elm Disease crippled it.

It’s the same concept with the census. Population loss only became a major topic of concern in the last five years, roughly, which would include only the last three years covered by the census.

Claims that Illinois is growing, however, are worse than unfounded. They are wrong. That’s because it’s recent years that matter, not the years immediately after 2010, and there’s solid evidence that population has declined in recent years.

Though there was anecdotal as well has hard evidence of some population loss earlier, IRS migration numbers show that the number of Illinois taxpayers and their dependents really began to tank in 2017. The number jumped from a loss of about 83,000 in 2016 to over 130,000 in 2017. And just this week the IRS issued its most recent migration report, showing further losses for 2020. See my colleagues’ detailed report on that new data here. Illinois lost another 100,000 taxpayers and their dependents in 2020, taking with them over $8 billion in Adjusted Gross Income. The annual IRS migration numbers are shown in this chart:

Be aware that the IRS migration numbers are far more likely to be accurate than the census and PES. Tax returns are easy to count, whereas the census has known errors and the PES is based on a survey sample.

Annual Census Bureau population change estimates tell a similar story. They showed modest increases in population from 2010 through 2013, and comparatively small losses from then through 2017, never reaching 42,000. But the estimated population losses really jumped thereafter, exceeding 55,000 in 2018 and increasing to a record loss of 114,000 in 2021.

Wait, some will say. Haven’t the annual Census Bureau estimates proved to be too inaccurate to consider? After all, when you total them up they show that Illinois should have had a cumulative loss of about 240,000 people from 2010 to 2020, which is far worse than both the Census and PES now show.

Well, at least some of the same folks who now want to disregard Census Bureau estimates in favor of the bureau’s PES sure had a different viewpoint when Bruce Rauner was in office. In 2016 Illinois Working Together issued a press release saying “Illinois’ worst-in-the-nation population decline provides yet another example of the devastation caused by Governor Bruce Rauner.” Illinois Working Together was a pro-union, pro-Democrat, anti-Rauner group, and the press release was issued by Jake Lewis, currently deputy director of the Democratic Party of Illinois. And again in 2018 Lewis wrote, based on an estimate, that “Last year, Illinois had the largest population decline of any state.”

The truth probably is that, while the annual estimates are flawed, they represent the Census Bureau’s best assessment of annual changes and they likely are at least directionally correct — that Illinois’ population grew in the early part of the decade that began in 2010 but shrank in later years. “The estimates are based on current data on births, deaths and migration to calculate population change since the most recent decennial census date and produce a time series of estimates of population, demographic components of change, and housing units,” according to the Census Bureau.

Lastly, respecting direct evidence of population loss, data from moving companies consistently show a powerful outward trend. The most recent is the annual National Movers Study from United Van Lines. It shows Illinois at second from the bottom. Only New Jersey was worse in terms of outbound versus inbound moves. For Illinois, outbound moves exceed inbound moves by over two to one.

All which should lead you to ask, is the new PES at all accurate? In other words, was there really any undercount in the census as the PES claims?

Not if you believe what the State of Illinois said earlier. In 2020 Pritzker led what he said was the nation’s most aggressive effort to run up the census count by outreach and encouraging participation, and he probably was not exaggerating much if at all. That’s to his credit. In November 2020 the state issued a document boasting of the success of that effort, saying that there was no undercount. It said:

As of October 28, 2020, the state of Illinois had a self-response rate of 71.4 percent. The USCB reported that its non-response follow-up had reached an additional 27.6 percent of households for an overall rate of 99.9 percent.

In other words, the state said any undercount was negligible — .01 percent and not 1.97% per the PES which the state now says we should believe. If the state was truthful and correct in November 2020, its current cry about undercount is nonsense.

The PES may well be in error, and the Census Bureau goes to some length to point that out. The PES is based on a study of a sample of just 160,000 households – 0.1% of the 130 million households in America. That supposedly produces a 90% confidence level, which is not very high in the survey world. My colleagues at Wirepoints spent an hour on the phone last week with a bureau spokesperson. As they reported, she said the 2020 Census count and the PES are based on “entirely separate” methodologies. The “undercount” percentage is based on a small sample and mathematically can’t be applied to the census count.

What’s most suspicious about both the census and the PES numbers is how strikingly they diverge from the IRS numbers. It’s hard to see how the IRS numbers could be wrong on the shrinkage they show in the number of taxpayers and their dependents in Illinois. The IRS has the tax returns and it’s a simple count.

If the PES is correct about the supposed undercount, the explanation would have to be that Illinois has a growing number of residents who are not filing tax returns. A population specialist from the University of Illinois told WTTW the specific, likely answer. She predicts these are “migrant magnet” states, and the upward adjustments are because many migrants may have been initially reluctant to participate in the census.

That makes sense. Undocumented immigrants are supposed to be counted in the census, but the Census Bureau says they traditionally get undercounted, so the PES tried to find them.

Getting them and all other residents properly counted helped protect the size of Illinois’ Congressional delegation. That’s why it was wise for Pritzker to help run up the numbers. A higher count also increases the share of federal money flowing to Illinois. Pritzker is now reportedly working to get the PES adjustments reflected in that share, instead of using the original census numbers. That would be good for the state, too.

Aside from those matters, however, it’s taxpayers who really matter for Illinois’ future. There is no scenario for Illinois to become competitive again unless it halts the outflow and restores growth to its tax base. That’s why the IRS migration numbers are so disturbing.

Illinois’s special effort to increase the 2020 census count highlights another reason why comparing the 2010 census to the 2020 census is a faulty way to measure growth or shrinkage. No such effort was made in 2010. Thus, it’s apples and oranges to compare the 2010 snapshot to the 2020 snapshot.

In conclusion, the evidence that matters is from recent years and taxpayers are particularly important. That evidence overwhelmingly continues to show shrinkage, and nothing being cited in the census or the new Census Bureau PES refutes it.

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We’ve focused on empirical evidence in this column but some common sense and your personal observations may be equally important.

Common sense says it takes years to move after a resident concludes that he wants to. As we’ve written repeatedly, people who want to move usually must wait to their children graduate from high school, find new jobs for themselves and their spouses, find a new home, sell their house and more.  A 2016 Paul Simon Institute poll found that nearly half of Illinoisans said they would like to move, and high taxes were the primary reason. That’s consistent with what we all hear and see every day with our own eyes and years.

The consequences are only now unfolding.

*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.