By: Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner
When the U.S. Census Bureau released its state population estimates for 2021 last December, Illinois’ population drop of 114,000 was the second-largest in the country on a percentage basis. Illinois lost nearly 1 percent of its population.
Now the Census has released the county-level data for 2021 and it exposes just how widespread Illinois’ population problems are. Eighty-one of the state’s 102 counties lost people in 2021.
The latest data continues a bad trend. In 2020 the bureau reported Illinois was just one of three states to shrink over the last decade (2020 vs. 2010), along with Mississippi and West Virginia. Illinois’ 18,000 population shrinkage contrasts with the massive growth of Texas (3.9 million increase) and Florida (up 2.7 million) and that of Illinois’ neighbors Indiana and Wisconsin, up 302,000 and 207,000 people, respectively.
2021 shows that Illinois is still bleeding people from every corner of the state. The state’s 81 shrinking counties lost 121,000 people, while the 21 counties that grew gained just 7,400 people.
Biggest winners and losers
The state’s biggest loser in 2021 was Cook County. It lost nearly 90,000 people, the 3rd-biggest loss of any county in the nation behind Los Angeles County and New York County.
DuPage County was next, losing over 6,000 in population. St. Clair, Lake and Peoria counties rounded out the top five losers.
The biggest winner was Kendall County, which gained a little over 2,500 people. McHenry, Will, Grundy and Champaign were next. Each gained less than 1,500 people.
On a regional basis, Cook County was the biggest loser by far with a 1.7 percent decline in total population over the year. The Collar counties were a mixed bag, with Kane, Lake and DuPage counties registering losses and only Will and McHenry gaining. That’s unusual, as the Collar counties usually all gain residents from those fleeing Cook County.
Meanwhile, downstate counties lost a total 18,000 people, a 0.4 percent loss in population over the year.
Any way you cut it, 2021 was a terrible year for Illinois. It's impossible to know just how much shrinkage was driven by Illinois’ draconian and heavy-handed Covid policies, but what we do know is that Illinois lawmakers have made no effort to make Illinois more livable.
Read more from Wirepoints:
- As the folly of Illinois’ new energy law becomes evident, a ray of hope breaks through
- What Illinois incompetence looks like: the state’s unemployment insurance fiasco
- A stunning miscalculation: CDC cuts nation’s reported child COVID deaths by nearly 25 percent
- Leaving Illinois: Another wealthy Chicago entrepreneur “votes with his feet”
- 2021 Census numbers are horrible for Illinois: Population decline second worst in country, behind only New York
A set of state lawmakers want to extend CPS’ current school closing moratorium to February 1, 2027 – the same year CPS is set to transition to a fully-elected school board. That means schools like Manley High School, with capacity for more than 1,000 students but enrollment of just 78, can’t be closed for anther three years. The school spends $45,000 per student, but just 2.4% of students read at grade level.
Hopefully, all media will get the message, in Illinois, too.
Ted joined Tom Miller of WJPF to talk about Illinois’ highest-in-the-nation property taxes, why lawmakers don’t want to touch the tax’s cost drivers, just how much Illinoisans’ tax burden has grown over the decades, why Gov. Pritzker failed to meet his promise to reform property taxes, and more.
How about the latest census isn’t accurate enough to determine actual stats because they did a crap job of counting everybody?
I feel the same and can relate to all of the comments that I’ve read. My family and job keeps me here, otherwise I have no reason or desire to stay. I hadn’t really thought about politics much before until about 5 -7 years ago when I started to pay attention. Throughout these last years, especially when Pritzker came to office, I started seeing all of the little things that Illinois government is doing to the people that live here as well as the corporations. Raising taxes, raising fees on most everything they can get there hands on, so they… Read more »
Is there any way to calculate the tax dollar loss due to Illinois citizens in border counties who, like me, go to the neighboring state to buy gas, groceries, appliances etc.?
A study published in 2014 estimated the effects of sales tax differentials, apparently based on the amount of the difference and the distance. Data is from Nebraska, where local sales taxes apparently can vary. It seems that you could use it to estimate the impacts at the Illinois border. Unfortunately it is behind a paywall, but perhaps your local tax-funded government library can get it for you. LOCAL SALES TAX, CROSS-BORDER SHOPPING, AND DISTANCE (pp. 1-29)
Iksoo Cho
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26812186
Southern Illinois suffers so much from the Northern Illinois BS. They dont care how our communities are doing so long as we keep filling their pockets.
I put the rapists, murderers and thugs back out on the street after they get shot or stabbed. It warms my heart to help the destruction of shitcago. Just like the lunatic demoncrats want. I was born in shitcago and can’t believe what the politicians have done to this city. Nothing makes me happier than to hear the murder rate going up
I used to frequent this site and comment some. I check back once every six months or so. I moved to Colorado about two years ago, wife and kids and all. I grew up in Chicago, lived in Lakeview with my family, raised my kids there, etc. But I got serious about moving a couple years pre-covid, when like you, I started hitting a wall and the complete dread of Illinois’ trajectory and the hopelessness of the situation sunk in. Every former Chicagoan I talked to who had moved said the same thing: “My only regret was not doing it… Read more »
I’m beginning to think some people just like to complain about Illinois and will ride the death spiral forever rather than get out. You wrote a great comment.
I left Illinois in 1986. My brother and I were the first in the family to do so. My roots are deep in Lake County, and I always had a desire to return. Every time I looked at returning, or buying investment property, the numbers just didn’t make sense. The public university system is at best mediocre too, a factor with bright kids. My parents both passed away last year and while my brother and I persuaded my mother to retire in North Carolina, my father lived to see carjackings in his Gold Coast neighborhood – he started a global… Read more »
Anonymous, can’t blame you. Some here, however, can’t really leave and some of us see ourselves as part of a broader war. Like the Ukranians fighting in Mariupol. It’s brutal there and the city is pulverized, but they fight on, for good reason in a broader perspective.
Actually Mark you can leave. Nobody is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to stay.
Nearly 4 Million people have fled Ukraine in the past month with nothing but the clothes on their back. They had community ties just like anyone else but they still made the courageous move instead of sitting and whining about how bad things are.
Indy, only women and children have left Ukraine. Not that I have any problem with those who choose to leave. That’s an entirely reasonable and responsible choice for many.
My family here goes back 5 or 6 generations to the 1880’s. I have old photographs of generations of family members all born, raised, and dies in Chicago. Leaving IL makes me a refugee not a migrant. I’ll leave eventually but I’ll fight the carpetbagging progressive first.
My entire immediate family has left. I don’t blame them one bit for leaving, but it hurts. I now have a number of little relatives born that I rarely see.
Little relatives I like that same here but I have a younger daughter in North Carolina and a son in North Las Vegas they keep telling us to leave, again the little relatives from my oldest daughter keep us here for now.
Thanks. Not trying to be antagonistic – I’m sure you get it. The whole situation just sucks, and it’ll get worse as the normies and higher earners (tend to go hand in hand) get pushed out. I admit it’s kinda fascinating as a thought exercise to think what this place is going to look like in 20-30 years.
I’ve found it’s not necessarily the higher earners that are leaving the Chicago area. There are a lot of high paying jobs in this town and continues to be a a regional, if not national, draw for wealth and wealthy families. For the upper middle class, the Chicago/Suburbs provide a very affordable lifestyle relative to most other upper middle class areas with similar incomes. A nice home on the North Shore would cost anywhere from 2x to 10x as much in a comparable area in NY, NJ, FL, CA, WA, OR, with lower income taxes too (not RE taxes). In… Read more »
Middle class guy here who retired to North Carolina in 2020. My yearly savings on taxes and car insurance here in NC pay for my out of pocket health insurance, so my yearly spending amount has remained the same since I retired. I didn’t take a big hit to self-insure in retirement. My property taxes are only $1850 for a 2700 sq ft house on 1.25 acres. Even better, taxes have not changed since I bought my house in 2019. None of the yearly Illinois tax increases that never stopped. NC is also is the process of dropping the state… Read more »
Exactly what my daughter is saying also, GET OUT DAD.
It will be the Third World. A few rich people, no middle class, and a huge lower class dependent on the government. I think the model would be one of the high crime cities in South Africa.
YES, this is my fear too. 20% of the state will be ‘rich’ with $250k, $300k household incomes up to the tens of millions, 40% will be middle/lower middle class, and the rest, 40%, will be really really poor, living off the dole. It’s going to be mostly white/asians with all the money, and a massive underclass of poor BIPOC with virtually no way to improve their lot in life, and most politicians will pander to that, until the last golden goose has left the state.
debtsor, here are 3 tipping points that accelerate the demise of the city into the Third World. 1. The number of cops quitting or retiring increases to the point where the remaining cops also start to leave. In dictatorships the dictator at least knows that he must take care of his security force. This is the fatal flaw in the Illinois tyrant’s plans. 2. Another summer of riots will finish off downtown Chicago. Suburbanites are already writing off downtown for the most part. 3. If Ken Griffin’s Citadel leaves town, that will be the beginning of the end of Chicago’s… Read more »
Mark, OP here. There’s nobility in fighting the good fight, and I’m sure all of us like minded people appreciate what you do, but dang man, at a certain point doesn’t it just make more sense to admit defeat, capitulate, and either focus on less misery-filled things in life or better yet move someplace that makes you and your family happier? That’s kinda how I saw it. I saw Chicago/IL as akin to being trapped in an abusive relationship, and I realized that I didn’t need this anymore. People move all the time – so could I, was it really… Read more »
You’re right.
OP, I don’t quarrel with your decision one bit.
Well said.
Time to grow some courage like a Ukrainian and do the right thing by moving out of Illinois.
You’re correct. Those who want to change IL are also correct. People who frequent this site likely do so to feel sane. To know others see the same insanity happening around them that they see. It’s validation. But it’s also hopefully to better arm themselves with information that will change minds on the direction both IL and the US are headed. Do you see similarities between IL and the US government at large? To more sharply convince others of the cancer that is progressivism. Those that believe truth is relative and carry the mantle for greater centralized power in government.… Read more »
Here, here! Those who remain and try to change the IL machine are the real NPCs and the source of funding for IL male bovine excrement.
How sad is it to think that the only thing to save Illinois, for a little while, was a pandemic. The resulting Federal bailout of blue states helped Illinois stay afloat. Pritzker’s underhanded plan to pad the 2020 census numbers provided political cover by making it appear the population decline over the last decade wasn’t as bad as it truly was. Surrounding Midwest states see the weakened position Illinois is in and will continue to target residents. The highest tax burden in the country, continued political corruption, increased violent crime and ridiculous progressive policies will drive out hundreds of thousands… Read more »
Is it unreasonable to suggest that a net loss of 1% annually could trend for the next decade? It seems entirely possible. The political elite keeps finding new ways to dissuade citizens to stay. A trend like that could result in a loss of more than 1,000,000 people! At some point, the political panic should set in, but it might be too late. How would Illinois reverse the trend when it’s been consistently stripping people and businesses of hard earned income and piling up billions in liabilities? Offering incentives it can’t afford? Doubling tax rates? Steps to reverse must begin… Read more »
Illinois is a sanctuary state – they can acquire a million people in no time at all.
And all the working people of Illinois will foot the bill.
It’s the ‘Illinois way.’
All of these facts and statistics yet the politicians do NOTHING to change the course of things,tax and spend,more freebees,green new deal,racist statues,way to go illinois politicians,keep driving out the productive tax payers and increasing the welfare recipients,higher public employee wages and benefits….how to ruin a state?-just ask illinois politicians
DuPage losing population is concerning. Probably the state’s most profitable county.
“Illinois lawmakers have made no effort to make Illinois more livable”
Parasites live off the carcass. So . . .