CHICAGO | Economic & Business Development

[moorhosj1]

Originally Posted by twister244

Interesting....

I wonder if Chicago will get a good chunk considering they are HQ'd here?

Based on how many of their job openings on LinkedIn are in Chicago, I'd expect a bunch of these to land here.

[Vlajos]

Originally Posted by twister244

Interesting....

I wonder if Chicago will get a good chunk considering they are HQ'd here?

Probably, I was at the Fire game on Saturday (which sucked as they blew a 2 goal lead) and overheard some Morningstar dudes talking about this. Sounds like jobs are definitely moving here

[Rizzo]

Originally Posted by Vlajos

Probably, I was at the Fire game on Saturday (which sucked as they blew a 2 goal lead) and overheard some Morningstar dudes talking about this. Sounds like jobs are definitely moving here

I’d just like to take a moment to say that ballparks and stadiums are perhaps the biggest corporate information leaks of any venue, even more than bars. The pricier the seats, the more critical information is revealed of company’s internal performance, good or bad. Someone is always listening.

[Vlajos]

Originally Posted by Rizzo

I’d just like to take a moment to say that ballparks and stadiums are perhaps the biggest corporate information leaks of any venue, even more than bars. The pricier the seats, the more critical information is revealed of company’s internal performance, good or bad. Someone is always listening.

Hahaha, I never thought of it, but you are almost certainly right!

[marothisu]

I wonder if they are relocating the actual people or the jobs. Probably a mixture of both but as we know, immigration in America is not easy even with a massive labor shortage and job lined ip. Way easier in other countries. It would be hard to lose that much domain knowledge so I'd imagine there's not as many relocation jobs coming to the US as imagined. Only if they just end up hiring new IMO.

We have a lot of open jobs and still so many places having trouble finding people to fill them. We need to open our doors a little more right now.

[marothisu]

Candy-maker Ferrero is opening up a 45K sq ft innovation center at the Marshall Field Building in the Loop with 170 employees. They own Ferrara, which is in OPO and some will relocate from there to this location. The article mentions that it's not clear how many will relocate vs. how many will be brand new jobs. Good news though for The Loop

https://www.chicagobusiness.com/comm...ovation-center

[CaptainJilliams]

Despite the news of companies moving out, still a lot of good things going for the city...

Chicago Is Looking Better To Investors, Especially Outside Downtown Core

"Transaction velocity for Chicago-area office properties during the 12 months up to April 2022 surpassed the number of trades recorded in 2019 before the pandemic hit, according to Marcus & Millichap’s second-quarter office market report.

...

Not only did more office assets change hands in 2021 than before the pandemic in 2019, but sales activity in the first quarter of 2022 was also above average for that time of the year, according to John Chang, Marcus & Millichap senior vice president and national director of research and advisory services.

...

Crain’s Chicago Business reported net absorption, or the amount of leased and occupied space, was up by nearly 290K SF in the second quarter, according to CBRE. Positive net absorption over the past nine months hit more than 900K SF."

[twister244]

Originally Posted by CaptainJilliams

Despite the news of companies moving out, still a lot of good things going for the city...

Chicago Is Looking Better To Investors, Especially Outside Downtown Core

"Transaction velocity for Chicago-area office properties during the 12 months up to April 2022 surpassed the number of trades recorded in 2019 before the pandemic hit, according to Marcus & Millichap’s second-quarter office market report.

...

Not only did more office assets change hands in 2021 than before the pandemic in 2019, but sales activity in the first quarter of 2022 was also above average for that time of the year, according to John Chang, Marcus & Millichap senior vice president and national director of research and advisory services.

...

Crain’s Chicago Business reported net absorption, or the amount of leased and occupied space, was up by nearly 290K SF in the second quarter, according to CBRE. Positive net absorption over the past nine months hit more than 900K SF."

This is great to hear. I think Chicago (and other large metro centers) will be fine in the long run. Only because many folks enjoy being down in the city. Even though I'm remote, I love going to the WeWork in the West Loop only to be in the hustle/bustle of the area and grab food/drinks with friends after work. It's the Schaumburgs/Napervilles I would be worried about. There's no incentive to go to a suburban office park, unless you absolutely want to do in-person meetings, or you are being forced to go.

[sentinel]

Not sure where to put this as it's not Chicago specific, and can't recall if this was posted before, but good news that isn't reported enough:

With S&P bump, Illinois now upgraded by all three ratings agencies
S&P Global Ratings’ warned that “credit pressures remain,” but cited an improvement in the state’s financial flexibility, timely budget adoption and elimination of the bill backlog, as well as recent surplus revenues.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/politic...three-agencies

People can bitch about Pritzker all they want, but I believe he and his administration deserve a lot of credit for consecutive upgrades over the past couple of years. I don't like everything he's doing in Illinois, but I still plan to vote for him, barring any major, disastrous issue coming up between now and the election. The presumed opposing candidate is bat-shit crazy.

[left of center]

^ Link is broken. I believe this is the article:

https://chicago.suntimes.com/politic...three-agencies

And yes, Pritzker has been great for IL. The GOP has nothing to complain about, especially after the unmitigated disaster the Rauner administration was. The deficit, bill backlog, and debt all got *much* worse during his term. Pritzker navigated the state through the pandemic and helped right the ship financially during that time. Definitely one of the best governors this state has had in a long time. Maybe since Edgar.

Pritzker 2024!

[tjp]

I've got nothing against Pritzker, but has he really done that much to improve the state's financial situation? I'm genuinely asking. My impression is that most of the improvement is thanks to all the COVID relief $$$ from the federal government.

[ardecila]

Who cares? Pritzker didn't piss away all of the Covid money on wasteful spending, and used big pieces of it to improve the state's dire fiscal situation. Can't say his predecessors would have had the same restraint.

[marothisu]

The state received multiple ratings boosts from all the major ratings agencies. I think that says a lot. Just because there were some payments made doesn't mean the ratings are going to be boosted. They look at factors like how well these debts can actually be paid down over time. Obviously some good work has been done where the ratings have been boosted multiple times in the last year. Making a large payment but not making any fundamental changes to how it can be paid down really isn't going to get you multiple ratings boosts.

Also, I know that the teachers pension had some changes to it recently
https://www.sj-r.com/story/news/poli...de/9660094002/


Still a long way to go, but at least they aren't just letting shit sit around and let the entire ratings go to junk like some of the last govs did. There were 8 credit downgrades for Illinois between 2015 and 2017 while the budget impasse happened.

[left of center]

Originally Posted by tjp

I've got nothing against Pritzker, but has he really done that much to improve the state's financial situation?

The quants and eggheads at Moody's, S&P and Fitch all agree that he has, and all three have given Illinois *multiple* rating increases during his term. Stuff like that influences whether Illinois will pay billions extra in interest or not. So the answer from the financial system and debt markets would be a resounding yes.

[Randomguy34]

Speaking of money, Illinois recently reported collecting $445.3 million in tax dollars from weed sales during 2022 fiscal year. This is up 50% from last year's $297.7 million. Ha, maybe in a few years we'll get close to ~$1 billion a year

Article: https://www.marijuanamoment.net/illi...ity-retailers/

[Handro]

Originally Posted by Randomguy34

Speaking of money, Illinois recently reported collecting $445.3 million in tax dollars from weed sales during 2022 fiscal year. This is up 50% from last year's $297.7 million. Ha, maybe in a few years we'll get close to ~$1 billion a year

Article: https://www.marijuanamoment.net/illi...ity-retailers/

With a lot of new licenses going out this week I bet this number continues to grow exponentially. Another notch for Pritzker.

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by Handro

With a lot of new licenses going out this week I bet this number continues to grow exponentially. Another notch for Pritzker.

I'll be curious to see how many new licensees can open up innthe 6 months or whatever they were given. Hopefully all of them. But yeah I'm sure it'll grow. I'm also curious of the impact this will have on tourism dollars for that specific industry. It exists now but so few places that I'm sure there's big enough lines that will turn people off to having to wait so long for it.

[Klippenstein]

Originally Posted by Randomguy34

Speaking of money, Illinois recently reported collecting $445.3 million in tax dollars from weed sales during 2022 fiscal year. This is up 50% from last year's $297.7 million. Ha, maybe in a few years we'll get close to ~$1 billion a year

Article: https://www.marijuanamoment.net/illi...ity-retailers/

I did a quick search to compare to other states and Illinois is really raking in the money. It’s comparable or higher than the ones I was seeing. Quite the boon for IL. Probably one of the big reasons the credit rating was upgraded multiple times recently.

[marothisu]

Looking at total taxes the state has collected now for fiscal years (July - June each year)..

July '21 to June '22: $67.21B
July '20 to June '21: $56.35B
July '19 to June '20: $47.35B
July '18 to June '19: $48.04B
July '17 to June '18: $44.96B
July '16 to June '17: $38.28B


$38.28B in June 2017 for the entire US inflation wise is equal to around $46.7B in June 2022 dollars. So even adjusted for inflation, Illinois' tax revenue has grown 43.9% compared to 2016 to 2017 fiscal year. A huge difference is the individual income tax collected looking at these 2 periods of time. Big increases. It's less pronounced when you compare the July '18 to June '19 period. Considering inflation from June 2019 then there's a 5.1% growth in individual income taxes collected vs. then. If you assume 4.95% flat income tax for everyone, then the difference in total amount of money people in Illinois have made between the June '18 to June '19 AND July '21 to June '22 is +$26.2B.


In that period of time, here are the differences in terms of taxes collected:

Business Income: +$8.84B
Individual Income: +$4.8B
Sales and use: +$4B
Motor fuel: +$1.16B
Adult use cannabis: +$466.8M
Cigarette: +$76.5M
General Office/Misc: +$65.4M
Real Estate: +$46.1M
Private Vehicle Use: +$29.9M
Liquor: +$22.8M
Vehicle renting: +$6.9M
Senior Citizen Deferral: +$826K
Hotel: -$118.6M
Public Utility: -$134.9M
Gaming: -$508K
Live adult entertainment: -$5210

Even adjusted for inflation, the sales tax income is up around 8%. So yeah the cannabis industry certainly doesn't hurt but a major driver of the increase is really business and individual taxes as well as sales taxes on goods counting fuel. I don't know all the loans the state has out, but I'm sure some of the ones opened before the pandemic that are fixed rate ones are benefitting from more taxes being collected due to inflation and various wage growth.

[Vlajos]

Originally Posted by marothisu

Looking at total taxes the state has collected now for fiscal years (July - June each year)..

July '21 to June '22: $67.21B
July '20 to June '21: $56.35B
July '19 to June '20: $47.35B
July '18 to June '19: $48.04B
July '17 to June '18: $44.96B
July '16 to June '17: $38.28B


$38.28B in June 2017 for the entire US inflation wise is equal to around $46.7B in June 2022 dollars. So even adjusted for inflation, Illinois' tax revenue has grown 43.9% compared to 2016 to 2017 fiscal year. A huge difference is the individual income tax collected looking at these 2 periods of time. Big increases. It's less pronounced when you compare the July '18 to June '19 period. Considering inflation from June 2019 then there's a 5.1% growth in individual income taxes collected vs. then. If you assume 4.95% flat income tax for everyone, then the difference in total amount of money people in Illinois have made between the June '18 to June '19 AND July '21 to June '22 is +$26.2B.


In that period of time, here are the differences in terms of taxes collected:

Business Income: +$8.84B
Individual Income: +$4.8B
Sales and use: +$4B
Motor fuel: +$1.16B
Adult use cannabis: +$466.8M
Cigarette: +$76.5M
General Office/Misc: +$65.4M
Real Estate: +$46.1M
Private Vehicle Use: +$29.9M
Liquor: +$22.8M
Vehicle renting: +$6.9M
Senior Citizen Deferral: +$826K
Hotel: -$118.6M
Public Utility: -$134.9M
Gaming: -$508K
Live adult entertainment: -$5210

Even adjusted for inflation, the sales tax income is up around 8%. So yeah the cannabis industry certainly doesn't hurt but a major driver of the increase is really business and individual taxes as well as sales taxes on goods counting fuel. I don't know all the loans the state has out, but I'm sure some of the ones opened before the pandemic that are fixed rate ones are benefitting from more taxes being collected due to inflation and various wage growth.

Amazing really. Clearly there is job and wage growth here.