41 Comments - Publius - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 8:59 am: Jobs go where customers are or where the infrastructure is good enough to get their goods to market. a side question how many of the 42,000 downstate jobs lost are state workers that retired and not replaced, is retirement and not rehired counted as job losses? - Ray del Camino - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 9:03 am: Have a look at Carbondale, which Baron Von Carhartt has been starvin’ the last two years. - Publius - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 9:05 am: The contract on America in the 1990s has destroyed all civility in politics from the congress to the courthouse. Newt Gingrich’s win at all costs strategy has lead us to this hyperdriven agendas that leave no room for compromise. - SuburbanChicagoan - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 9:05 am: This is why I laugh at people who say Chicago is this horrible place that sucks up all there precious downstate tax dollars. Without Chicago what would be the point of staying here unless you work on a farm? Most of the good jobs seem to go to the city. - Publius - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 9:12 am: Oops post ed to wrong string sorry - Roman - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 9:14 am: This is fueled by the loss of industrial jobs in Rockford, Decatur, Peoria, Quad Cities, coal country, etc. The high wage union jobs are gone. Explains the thinning ranks of downstate Dems in the GA — and Trump’s downstate landslide. - Anon - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 9:16 am: Maybe having Cook County secede wouldn’t be such a bad deal after all, for Cook County. Where’s Rep. Bill Mitchell when you need him? - Citystates - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 9:17 am: This is the pattern across the world. Large cities - and the surrounding areas - are where growth is occurring. Small cities and rural areas are declining. If it wasn’t for our current redistribution policies, this trend would be even worse. - A Jack - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 9:17 am: Most job growth is in technology. Chicago is a main hub in the Internet. Meanwhile, we are moving away from coal as an energy source so that hasn’t helped downstate. And factories are moving toward more automation. I don’t know if the job loses include agriculture, but farms have been trending toward consolidation over the last few decades which has also resulted in job loses. - Tone - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 9:20 am: Downstate has to compete with Indiana, Wisconsin, Missouri etc, our policies are uncompetitive - Rogue Roni - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 9:23 am: Rural Illinois sucks. When the kids go to college (which is more and more not in Illinois) they dont return. There just isn’t much there to entice them culturally or economically to stay. - fed up - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 9:24 am: = “Illinois must act now, with a bipartisan sense of urgency, to position itself for future job creation that is being discussed in boardrooms all across the country.” = Is not a war being fought over Illinois being a blue state or flipping red? Won’t the stalemate continue until one side gives up or loses? Not much problem solving can happen in this environment. - Delimma - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 9:30 am: Why are states trying so hard to destroy their citizens’ ability to earn a living so that corporations can earn a larger profit? Why are we competing with our neighbors? Pie in the sky, but perhaps we should all just operate under the same rules, and stop competing with each other, and try to provide a better workforce so we can compete with our real competitors overseas. Ok, I suppose I should lay off the magic dust. - Anonymous - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 9:40 am: Maybe busting out public universities and community colleges to stick it to union and prevailing wage workers isn’t a great economic growth strategy after all. - RIJ - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 9:41 am: Fifty years ago I grew up in a town of 5,400 in a county of 15,000. To me southern Illinois has always been hollowed out. Peoria, QC, Rockford were all “big cities” to me. There is further hollowing - the town is now 5,100 in a county of 13,500. There used to be a lot of oil jack pumps working in the area (going to visit the parents, I always knew I was nearing home with that first whiff of oil). I don’t know what can be done for an agricultural county that is 45 minutes from the nearest Interstate. They are what they are. - 340 E Randolph - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 9:41 am: I blame Mike Bost and Shinkus. Every year he is in office- whatever district he represents- losses thousands of jobs. - Roman - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 9:43 am: - A Jack - Just like the industrial economy, automation has eroded downstate jobs in the agriculture economy. Talk about self driving cars? Self driving tractor combines are already here. There is job growth — in fact, a labor shortage — in Ag related fields like bio-tech, transportation and logistics, and international business, but guess where those jobs are based? Yep, Chicago. - Generic Drone - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 9:45 am: Someday, hopefully before it’s too late we may realize the important aspect of small towns. They are the real wealth of Illinois. - Citystates - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 10:03 am: Small towns “are the real wealth of Illinois.” Maybe so, but not in any economic sense. Absent massive economic redistribution from metro areas, they will continue to wither. - Anon221 - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 10:04 am: “Without Chicago what would be the point of staying here unless you work on a farm?” and “Rural Illinois sucks.” You are welcome to your viewpoints and opinions, but not everyone in rural Illinois sees things through the same lens. I’ve chosen to live in rural Illinois my entire life, and I’ll lump in my stint as a student in Normal as “rural Illinois” since it’s not the big city or burbs of Chicago. Just remember, “rural” encompasses the vast majority of this State, maybe not in population, but is a state really only about population??? - Honeybear - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 10:09 am: So I did some revising of numbers. Instead of forgiving aprox 850 million from going into our coffers by granting EDGE tax incentives in 2016. Why don’t we collect that money then put a sizable portion towards small business development? Small business helps small towns Reopen the small business centers at the public universities. Main Street not Wall Street - Ahoy! - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 10:10 am: Chicago is an economy on it’s own. However, 95% of our counties have to compete with Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky, Indiana, Wisconsin, etc. Our (everyone outside of the Chicago MSA) cost of doing business and business climate does not compete. Madigan and the other Chicago legislators, which make up a majority, need to understand that and help us out. Unfortunately, we do not have enough of a voice (votes) to help ourselves. - Honeybear - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 10:16 am: Hospital Enterprize Zones would be super helpful for rural communities. But is DCEO looking at that? No Let’s chase multinational rainbows and hope for wage slave jobs UBI can’t come fast enough for rural Illinois. - Anonymous - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 10:19 am: Downstaters just love Rauner & urge him to ’stay the course.’ - Anon221 - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 10:21 am: CityStates- “Maybe so, but not in any economic sense.” Please clarify- economic sense to whom??? Many people rely on “small towns” in Illinois for their livelihood, their medical care, their education, their transportation, and many other needs of daily living. These same “small towns” help provide the various (social, economic, educational, etc) infrastructures needed to make our State function. Think of it as an integrated spider web for a moment. Keep plucking the strands and breaking them, the entire web weakens and fails to catch anything that will provide long-term “sustenance”. - Johnnie F. - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 10:22 am: Once Trump has fixed all the immigration problems. Americans will flood back to rural American to reclaim all those jobs that were held by illegals./s The former small IL town I grew up in has lots of jobs, it is now a Chicago suburb. - Anon - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 10:23 am: From 2008 to now — we’ll call it 8 years — there has been a significant reduction in public sector employment. I wonder what chunk of that 40,000 jobs comes directly from municipal, county, and state positions — and if one could argue that the rest of the positions may have been reduced by indirect employment lost due to those positions being cut or not existing. Illinois has decided to not invest in strengthening it’s public sector and has been blaming the budget when it’s really more of a case of refusing to pay the bill for the public services folks were receiving in the 1980s and 1990s. The continued practices has stripped community of services and allowed infrastructure to decay and stopped communities from investing in areas or sectors where growth can occur. There’s a near by elementary school that hasn’t hired a teacher in 6 years. There’s a near by University that just laid off hundreds of employees and it’s best and brightest are fleeing for universities with both job security and the ability to actually provide a travel budget for conferences or support folks doing research, the staff at the DNR and EPA down state has shrunk dramatically. This probably just isn’t a case of the market making job growth and living in the Chicago area more desirable, it’s indicative of a State that is refusing to invest in itself and refusing to at a responsible tax rate to provide services and maintain the state’s assets and institutions. - Precinct Captain - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 10:43 am: Maybe it’s time for another one of those studies George Ryan tried to suppress as Speaker. You know, the one that showed NE IL as the bread bowl for takers downstate. - ArchPundit - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 11:02 am: A ton of ag is automated as well as factory jobs. This isn’t unique to Illinois though with rural areas suffering everywhere. One thing to keep in mind is that at the same time the jobs are being lost, the unemployment rate in most of these places is pretty low. Labor intensive ag like livestock operations–poultry, hogs, etc find labor from immigrants–and those places stable with population are often because of immigrants. Illinois obviously have some mid size cities doing well, but the key is usually a university and/or other business anchors that are more information based than manufacturing. Manufacturing has a lot of jobs open, but not jobs that you can get hired for off the street. Advanced manufacturing needs machinist, welders, designers, programmers, etc–but you need something beyond high school to do the job. Often just a 2 year degree, but more than high school. - MadManMadigan - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 11:06 am: But we downstaters still hear “Let Chicago be their own state, we’re better without them!” - Augie - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 11:10 am: Except for college towns most of downstate Illinois stoped investing in themselves also. Whats the pass fail percentage of school referendums or the willingness pay for infrastructure upgrades or take on negligent property owners who let there buildings fall in disarray? I sill live in a small community on Rt 80. There are some bright spots in my area, Ottawa being one of them. They have spent the last 16 years investing in there own town and now people wanting to come here. In all fairness though Starved Rock has helped also. But you see it and hear it in a lot of downstate areas the people have stopped being as welcoming as they once were ,they are more hunkered down than ever,,which causes young people to bolt for somewhere else. - Tone - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 11:41 am: Ottawa is Chicago metro area. - Peoria Citizen - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 12:09 pm: Most of Illinois is similar to all of Iowa and the same problem persists in Iowa. That said, Des Moines and Iowa City are both thriving communities. Whether you’re a curmudgeon or still proud of our state, legislators (if you can call them that) aside, Illinois has Champaign, Peoria, Rockford, Springfield, etc… Give these areas the tools they need to truly get down to business. Getting the morons we elected to do their freaking jobs would be a great place to start. Fix Illinois and the perception that it is a broken state and the rest will follow. - MyTwoCents - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 12:31 pm: Rural Illinois (and in a lot of other states) has been in decline for decades. The small county I grew up hit its highest population in the 1900 census and has basically been shrinking in population (with the exception of a small baby boomers bump) ever since. Now any growth is centered around the downstate cities and when they suffer it only magnifies the problems downstate. - blue dog dem - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 1:37 pm: Dear Chicago area residents, Thank you for supporting us downstate folk the last couple of decades. It looks like Ya’ll got some extra cash up there, so maybe you guys can raise your income tax and lower ours a wee bit. While your at it, can ya send down some of that real thick pizza. We can’t get nun of that stuff down here. We don’t need any of them murders tho. Seems like were gettin our share at SIUC. Thanks. - champaigndweller - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 1:39 pm: No, rural Illinois does not suck. People in small towns downstate are really struggling, and it’s really disheartening to hear their problems brushed off like this. - Demoralized - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 2:02 pm: ==Ottawa is Chicago metro area.== Not that there is any point to that comment, but, no, it’s not. - Anon221 - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 2:09 pm: Map of 2010-based Illinois Metropolitan and Micropolitan Area Delineations is on page 4 of this report. Ottawa does not “belong” to Chicago’s MSA. http://www.ides.illinois.gov/LMI/ILMR/Changes_to_MSA.pdf - Chris - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 2:54 pm: “is a state really only about population?” Until you figure out a way to get land to vote, yeah, it is. Government of the people, by the people and for the people. No mention of dirt or crops or animals. For better and for worse. As Willy sez (paraphrased): Dirt don’t vote. - Oswego Willy - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 3:16 pm: (Tips cap to - Chris -) To the Post, Illinois is a very diverse state. We’re not one thing to everyone. I truly feel that these issues with regional advantages and disadvantages really started to meld into political polarizing issues and hurting both downstate, midstate, suburbs, “Chicago” was the reducing of the seats in the Illinois House. There are not members of both parties weighing in to help downstate, while there are also a lack of bipartisanship within “Chicago” too. There is a lack of “state plan” for working to make things better in regions while the parties try to carve out regions to be their strongholds, running out the other party, with the end result at times cutting off their own nose with all these problems to face. When the legislative bodies look at this “dirt” as Illinois and not areas in “safe, one party, districts”, then both parties will be invested, hopefully heavily invested in “Chicago”, suburbs, midstate, downstate becoming “One State”. That’s where we are. We are reaping what we sowed with this carving of dirt, and forgetting about that we are all people needing to work to make “all the dirt”… work. - Peru Pride - Thursday, Feb 2, 17 @ 7:44 pm: Peru is another I-80 town doing well. Jim Thompson did us a big favor by including I-39 in the Build Illinois program in 1985. Today, Peru a town of 10,000, has a $50 million a year budget. Do the per capita math, pretty good numbers. Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.