Originally Posted by Steely Dan
so for the past handful of years, the local media in IL (based on mostly bogus census estimates) have droned on and on and on about "The Great Illinois Exodus".
and while it is true that the state was one of only 3 that posted negative growth for the past decade, the great exodus is really just a downstate thing.
Illinois 2010: 12,830,632
Illinois 2020: 12,812,508
growth: -18,124 (−0.1%)
9 Chicago MSA counties in IL 2010: 8,586,609
9 Chicago MSA counties in IL 2020: 8,730,688
growth: +144,079 (+1.7%)
the rest of IL 2010: 4,244,023
the rest of IL 2020: 4,081,820
growth: -162,203 (−3.8%)
chicagoland's modest growth is the only thing keeping IL barely treading water.
another popular narrative in the local media pertaining to the "The Great Illinois Exodus" is that everyone and their brother in Chicagoland is jumping the border over to NW Indiana because taxes.
but in reality, the 5 counties of NW Indiana (Lake, Porter, LaPorte, Newton & Japser Counties) only gained a combined total of ~11,800 people over the past decade, hardly some earth-shattering, dynamic-changing, mass migration within a CSA of nearly 10M people.
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