THE STATE THAT STOPPED BELIEVING IN ITSELF

THE STATE THAT STOPPED BELIEVING IN ITSELF

How Illinois traded momentum for ideology — and why opportunity is quietly moving on

Staff Writer
January 2026

Illinois didn’t fall apart in a single moment.

There was no dramatic announcement, no closing bell that rang across the state. Instead, the unraveling happened quietly — one decision at a time. A business chose not to expand. A family decided to leave. A young graduate took a job somewhere else and never looked back.

One of those decisions came from a third-generation manufacturing owner in central Illinois. His company had survived recessions, globalization, and decades of change. This time, the challenge wasn’t demand or labor. It wasn’t innovation or competition. It was Illinois.

“We wanted to stay,” he said. “But staying stopped making sense.”

That sentence captures the reality Illinois now faces — not as a slogan, but as lived experience.

The data confirms it.

In December 2025, Chicago — long the state’s economic engine — recorded its worst employment climate since 2009, according to the Chicago Business Barometer. The index fell to 43.5, marking 25 consecutive months of contraction. For the second month in a row, not a single surveyed business reported increased hiring.

When no one is hiring, the problem is no longer cyclical. It’s structural.

Chicago’s unemployment rate climbed above the national average, but the deeper issue lay beneath the headline number. Nearly all recent job gains came from government, education, and healthcare. The private sector — the part of the economy that creates durable growth — stalled.

Chicago is not separate from Illinois. When Chicago struggles, the effects ripple outward, touching communities from Rockford to Carbondale.

Over the last several years, Illinois has consistently underperformed the nation. In every quarter since late 2022, national employment growth has exceeded Illinois’ growth. While the U.S. economy expanded at a healthy pace, the Chicago region grew at roughly half the national rate.

At the same time, Illinois’ labor force participation has declined sharply. Tens of thousands of residents have stopped looking for work altogether. They don’t appear in unemployment statistics, but their absence tells its own story.

You can’t build a future economy when your workforce is quietly disappearing.

Some have stepped away. Others have stepped out — leaving Illinois entirely.

In national rankings that measure economic performance, opportunity, and outlook, Illinois now sits near the bottom, regularly landing in the mid-to-high 40s among all states. This is no statistical fluke. It’s a pattern — and patterns influence behavior.

Since the pandemic, business departures from Illinois have accelerated, with companies citing the same reasons again and again: high taxes, regulatory complexity, rising crime, and political uncertainty. Expansion projects once destined for Illinois now cross state lines instead.

Illinois didn’t lose these jobs to globalization or automation. It lost them to policy.

Every business that leaves takes more than jobs. It takes suppliers, secondary employment, local spending, and future tax revenue. Every company that chooses another state compounds the loss.

The contrast is unavoidable.

Illinois doesn’t compete in a vacuum. It competes with Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, and Tennessee — states that offer lower tax burdens, clearer regulatory frameworks, and faster job growth. Many are gaining population while Illinois continues to lose it.

Capital has options. Illinois made itself the risky one.

Cost is at the center of the problem. Illinois imposes one of the heaviest overall tax burdens in the nation, including some of the highest corporate property taxes among major metropolitan areas. Even when lawmakers avoid broad tax increases, layered fees and targeted hikes quietly raise the cost of doing business.

For employers, the message is unmistakable: growth comes with penalties.

Illinois doesn’t just tax profits. It taxes patience.

Small businesses feel it first. Large businesses act on it fastest.

Economic growth also depends on confidence — and confidence depends on safety.

Persistent crime across Illinois’ urban centers has eroded both. Businesses factor security into every decision. Employees question commutes. Families weigh whether raising children here still makes sense.

No incentive package can compete with a sense of security.

Crime is not just a social failure. It is an economic deterrent — and Illinois pays for it every day.

Illinois’ expansive immigration policies add another layer of strain. Sanctuary-state laws and taxpayer-funded services have created significant long-term costs, drawing billions of dollars from budgets already pressured by slow growth and mounting obligations.

Supporters correctly note that immigrants play a vital role in the workforce and economy. That contribution is real. But fiscal reality is equally real.

Compassion without capacity eventually becomes collapse.

Illinois is committing to long-term spending without the long-term growth needed to sustain it.

All of this unfolds under Governor JB Pritzker, now seeking a third term and widely viewed as harboring national ambitions, alongside a far-left legislative supermajority that has controlled state government for years.

That concentration of power has produced continuity — but not correction.

Illinois is not short on economic plans or optimistic projections. It is short on accountability. Businesses continue to leave. Workers disengage. Residents depart.

When power never changes hands, failure becomes normalized — and warnings fade into background noise.

The true cost of Illinois’ decline isn’t always visible.

It’s the headquarters that never arrived.
The payrolls that never anchored communities.
The graduates who built lives elsewhere.
The tax base that never materialized.

You don’t notice opportunity leaving until it stops coming back.

This raises a question Illinois can no longer avoid: Is the state nearing a point of no return?

Shrinking labor force. Persistent out-migration. Slow private-sector growth. Rising costs. Structural obligations that grow heavier each year.

States don’t fail all at once. They drift — until drift becomes destiny.

You can manage decline for a while. Eventually, decline manages you.

Illinois still has advantages: geography, infrastructure, talent, history. But advantages unused become liabilities.

The choice ahead is stark and unavoidable — reform or managed decline, growth or dependency, renewal or irrelevance.

Illinois still has time.

But time is no longer on its side.

Sources:
Chicago Business Barometer (Chicago Policy Center); Illinois labor force and unemployment data; national and state economic rankings; tax climate and business migration analyses; crime reporting data; fiscal and immigration policy assessments.