CHICAGO | Economic & Business Development

[Baronvonellis]

Since the economy is doing alot better, do you think the population losses from the south and west sides have stopped by now? I think once we can stabilize those areas Chicago will start to gain population overall.

[UPChicago]

Originally Posted by Baronvonellis

Since the economy is doing alot better, do you think the population losses from the south and west sides have stopped by now? I think once we can stabilize those areas Chicago will start to gain population overall.

Unfortunately, in the absences of amerliorative action by state and local lawmakers to address racial inequity, I think this trend is guaranteed to persist for several decades.

[marothisu]

Yes, the population issues in some of these areas are a bit deep rooted. But as a bunch of people have left, it's possible that the loss of the specific areas are slowing a little bit.

Btw, chicago has only lost people in the last two estimates. It was gaining before and it's still a net gain. It's estimated to have gained population in more years since 2010 than it has lost. We'll see what happens with the next.

Population is a really shallow metric for judging the health of a city, but in Chicago's case it's indicative of the health of a subset of the city, but not the whole.

[left of center]

Originally Posted by Baronvonellis

Since the economy is doing alot better, do you think the population losses from the south and west sides have stopped by now? I think once we can stabilize those areas Chicago will start to gain population overall.

The population losses on the south and west side are more driven by violence and poor schools than the economy in general. That being said, the economic disadvantage of the residents of the south and west sides definitely is a primary contributor to those issues.

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by left of center

The population losses on the south and west side are more driven by violence and poor schools than the economy in general. That being said, the economic disadvantage of the residents of the south and west sides definitely is a primary contributor to those issues.

Nope. Actually a lot is driven by sectors like manufacturing going away and Chicago transitioning to more of a while collar place economically (still transitioning). There's a reason why almost all of the net loss in the city happened between 2001 and 2004 and the population since 2005 has mostly been hovering around the same level. Many people with the jobs that went away around this time either bolted for other places right away or they stuck around unsuccessfully for awhile before saying screw it and moving to places like Dallas, Atlanta, etc.

Look at another one of my posts too, a lot of the south side places are losing younger people under the age of 40 yet gaining people aged 55+

[ChiMIchael]

Originally Posted by marothisu

Nope. Actually a lot is driven by sectors like manufacturing going away and Chicago transitioning to more of a while collar place economically (still transitioning). There's a reason why almost all of the net loss in the city happened between 2001 and 2004 and the population since 2005 has mostly been hovering around the same level. Many people with the jobs that went away around this time either bolted for other places right away or they stuck around unsuccessfully for awhile before saying screw it and moving to places like Dallas, Atlanta, etc.

Look at another one of my posts too, a lot of the south side places are losing younger people under the age of 40 yet gaining people aged 55+

I think a lot of it was also the projects being taken down, with many of the voucher recipients going out of the city. I've also talked to many people in the south and west sides and number one reason for leaving the city was the crime, especially after hearing that they had to bury a friend of family member.

And I think that the demographic trends indicate Chicago going the direction of a"prosperous relic": A successful city not as economically strong as it used to be. Yeah, we city making strides in some ways the eludes most of the Rust Belt, but it hasn't really expanded it's economic base. It'll be great to get perhaps 10 more Grubhubs and Groupons, and that will me the moment when Chicago can achieve that desired turnaround.

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by ChiMIchael

I think a lot of it was also the projects being taken down, with many of the voucher recipients going out of the city. I've also talked to many people in the south and west sides and number one reason for leaving the city was the crime, especially after hearing that they had to bury a friend of family member.

And I think that the demographic trends indicate Chicago going the direction of a"prosperous relic": A successful city not as economically strong as it used to be. Yeah, we city making strides in some ways the eludes most of the Rust Belt, but it hasn't really expanded it's economic base. It'll be great to get perhaps 10 more Grubhubs and Groupons, and that will me the moment when Chicago can achieve that desired turnaround.

Obviously crime was and is a factor for some, but crime has been an issue in Chicago for decades. The 90s were arguably the worst time for crime in Chicago (80s and 70s were not good either), yet the city grew by nearly 113,000 people in that period of time. People did not all of a sudden say in 2001-2004 "Well, enough is enough crime wise" and a mass exodus happened. Actually, crime had decreased a very large amount in 2000 from a decade previous. That's not how it works especially when things were bad at that point for 30+ years. It had to do with jobs - there was a recession in 2001 if you remember and the US share of manufacturing in the world declined nearly 30% in 2002. Chicago, being a large hub of manufacturing, lost a ton of jobs. The areas that especially had a lot of these types of jobs were on the south and west sides. This is fairly well documented. Yes, crime is a factor, but your anecdotes pale in comparison to the actual reality of what happened in Chicago and some other cities in this period of time for why a bunch of people left. I'm sure the crime contributed to many people moving, but only after the economy for them went to crap and their opportunities became more limited. People were tolerating the crime in numerous areas of the city for decades because there were jobs in those places.

If you compare 2000 vs. 2017 in the Bureau of Labor Statistics' OES (https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm), you can see that there are 130,300 less Production Operations jobs in 2017 than 2000. These jobs are everything from butchers to carpenters to welders to assemblers to fabricators etc - it's the "manufacturing" types of jobs. Yet at the same time there's 142,620 more jobs of people in Computer, Business/Finance, and Management fields in 2017 vs. 2000. Then on top of that, there's 129,290 more people in the Healthcare industry in 2017 than 2000. There's 88,350 less office/admin assistant types of jobs (clerks, admin assistants) in 2017 than 2000.

[the urban politician]

^ I tend to agree. I think the fundamental factor is jobs.

[urbanpln]

There are many reasons for the losses, including the demolition of the CHA units.

http://www.metroplanning.org/news/84...opulation-loss

[LouisVanDerWright]

Of course at a fundamental level the exedus is all about economics, but I find just viewing everything through that lense to be a bit blunt. There are so many more variables than that. Of course the Great Migration was driven by those manufacturing job and the slow death of that industry starting as early as the 1970s contributed fundamentally to the current status of the Sout and West sides. Of course crime, at it's root, is driven by things such as unemployment, but there's so many more sociolical variables on top of it. It's a lot of chicken and egg questions to.

Just look at the crack epidemic. To what extent did that drive crime in these areas. To what extent did it further gut the ability of these communities to compete for jobs? To be even more meta, to what extent did society simply aggrivate that crisis with totally stupid or racist policies? To what extent did those policies, and the offshoots of those policies, create the toxic relationship between communities and then police? To what extent does that toxic relationship hamper the ability of both then police to so their job and the distrusting communities to do their own job of self policing crime wherever possible? How much did the social issues listed above sap the workforce on the South and West side and maybe hasten the flight of employers from that area? How much of the above issues we're just sheer racism?

It's really impossible to suss all this out, especially in a conversation limited to "it was crime" vs "it was job losses". Maybe it was some super f'd up combination of all of the above that created a downward spiral of self perpetuating poverty?

[MayorOfChicago]

Something that will be difficult to overcome in the 2020 census is the inclusion of the citizenship question, this is already expected to "scare" away a huge number of hispanics who aren't legal citizens, of which Chicago would have a great deal.

The south and west sides likely have far more actual residents than are counted. The mail-in rates for the 2010 census in south and west side areas were around 35%, compared to 85% for many suburban areas. Those rates were some of the absolute worst in the entire country.

They then turn to people who go door to door trying to get answers, and those rates were terrible as well as people in those areas are not overly accepting to answering the door for strangers and answering a bunch of questions.

There are some places the door to door people just skipped over, mostly the really run down and violent areas. Some massive apartment areas like Altgeld Gardens were apparently skipped altogether on the door to door.

Chicago would have had this rolling undercount, but I think it was quite large in 2010. You can just look at many obvious things - school enrollment has been going down, but certainly nowhere near enough to explain how the population of people aged 0-18 in the city apparently declined by 115,000 from 2000 to 2010.

One hispanic ward alderman pointed out the amount of household waste created by homes there and picked up by city garbage crews was inexplicable compared to the official population stats on that ward.

Or how about this:

Number of occupied housing units in the city:

2000: 1,152,867
2010: 1,194,337
+4%

Population went down by 7%. Of course household sizes are shrinking, but it tells a much different picture than "chicago is shrinking, everyone is leaving".

[Vlajos]

^ To further that, I think Chicago had one of the lowest census response rates in the entire country in 2010.

I think the city has gained another 10k+ housing units from 2010-2016 also. It's all very clear that we are losing low income families. The numbers I looked up yesterday show that $50K+ households are growing, while $49,999 and less are shrinking. And remember the median household income of the metro area is $66K.

[marothisu]

Very much agree with you LVDW that there's tons of factors which contribute but I tend to think that economic issues play a pretty big role in this. I find it amazing what people will put up with in regards to living situations when they have certain economic opportunity. When those go away, people kind of realize that they don't have to put up with what they were before and gives them even more reasons to move, whereas before they tolerated those things.

[IrishIllini]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

^ I tend to agree. I think the fundamental factor is jobs.

Agreed. People will put up with the BS of any city if they can find a job that pays the bills.

[IrishIllini]

Originally Posted by Vlajos

^ To further that, I think Chicago had one of the lowest census response rates in the entire country in 2010.

I think the city has gained another 10k+ housing units from 2010-2016 also. It's all very clear that we are losing low income families. The numbers I looked up yesterday show that $50K+ households are growing, while $49,999 and less are shrinking. And remember the median household income of the metro area is $66K.

Did you pull that from ACS data? I remember seeing somewhere that households earning <$75k were on the decline. That number ($75k) sounds high to me, so I took it with a grain of salt. Median household income is doing pretty well given the cost of living. It'd be nice if that were resulting from a rising tide, but it seems we're just draining the pond so to speak and that's inflating our income growth a bit.

[moorhosj]

Originally Posted by marothisu

Btw, chicago has only lost people in the last two estimates. It was gaining before and it's still a net gain. It's estimated to have gained population in more years since 2010 than it has lost. We'll see what happens with the next.

Luckily, these facts never get in the way of a good story. From Crain's:

But the reason for the decline isn't that more people are in more jobs but that the city's labor force shrank about 6,400 to 1.35 million—perhaps a reflection of the steady decline in the city's population since the 2010 census.

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by moorhosj

Luckily, these facts never get in the way of a good story. From Crain's:

Crain's is a lot of the time looking for negative news. Over a year ago, Chicago posted very interesting employment for something like 4 straight months, but Crain's didn't want to run the story. However, they run a story today comparing a month in 2018 vs. 2017, but also admitting these things with employment vary from month to month. Almost comical how they pick and choose what to run and what not to run.

And that bold part is sad, because it's not true. Chicago posted a few years of population growth before going the opposite way.

[Vlajos]

Originally Posted by IrishIllini

Did you pull that from ACS data? I remember seeing somewhere that households earning <$75k were on the decline. That number ($75k) sounds high to me, so I took it with a grain of salt. Median household income is doing pretty well given the cost of living. It'd be nice if that were resulting from a rising tide, but it seems we're just draining the pond so to speak and that's inflating our income growth a bit.

Yes 1 year ACS

in 2016, there were 165,476 households making $50-74.9K
and 115,938 households making $75-99.9K.

in 2010, there were 168,420 households making $50-74.9K
and 106,530 households making $75-99.9K.

So a small drop in the $50-75k and significant increase in the $75-99K brackets. I just looked at the $50K+ last time.

[Vlajos]

Originally Posted by marothisu

Crain's is a lot of the time looking for negative news. Over a year ago, Chicago posted very interesting employment for something like 4 straight months, but Crain's didn't want to run the story. However, they run a story today comparing a month in 2018 vs. 2017, but also admitting these things with employment vary from month to month. Almost comical how they pick and choose what to run and what not to run.

And that bold part is sad, because it's not true. Chicago posted a few years of population growth before going the opposite way.

Yeah, that's freaking silly. Not a peep on the last 5 or 6 years of strong job growth and they report on one month year over year that was slow?

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by Vlajos

Yes 1 year ACS

in 2016, there were 165,476 households making $50-74.9K
and 115,938 households making $75-99.9K.

in 2010, there were 168,420 households making $50-74.9K
and 106,530 households making $75-99.9K.

So a small drop in the $50-75k and significant increase in the $75-99K brackets. I just looked at the $50K+ last time.

And the number of households making below $35k went from 313,229 households to 277,133 households from 2010 to 2016, a decrease of 36,096 households or an 11.5% decrease.

And at the same time, the number of households making a minimum of $150k increased by 49,553 households. There were nearly 1.5 times the number of households added for this than the loss of households below the $35k line.

Going beyond this, the number of $200K+ households increased by 29,792 while the amount of households making below $10k decreased by 10,603.