CHICAGO — Brooke Landrum came to Chicago from Cincinnati in 2016 to attend Loyola University, and after graduation she decided to stay and settle into the bustling Lakeview neighborhood.
That put Landrum among the influx of newcomers who helped Illinois’ population grow by about 250,000 between 2010 and 2020, according to updated census figures released Thursday. The new estimate stands in contrast to the oft-expressed belief that the state is hemorrhaging people, and matches what Landrum, a 23-year-old market research analyst, has experienced on the North Side.
“I’m apartment hunting right now and all the decent ones get snapped up in 24 hours,” she said. “It’s so quick. It’s not a sign of people leaving.”
The U.S. Census Bureau originally found that Illinois lost about 18,000 people over the prior decade, which was the first time numbers showed Illinois’ overall population had declined since it joined the union in 1818. But after a follow-up survey — something that happens after each once-a-decade head count of the U.S. population — it discovered the state’s population figures had likely been undercounted.
The census findings last year showing the population decline underscored a major contention, made mostly by Republicans looking to criticize Illinois’ Democratic government leaders, that people are fleeing the state due in part to high taxes and crime. News that there was actually an uptick in population had Democrats running for their keyboards to trumpet the gain.
“These latest numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau show that Illinois is now a state on the rise with a growing population,” Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker said in a statement. “ … I look forward to celebrating this development with all Illinoisans, including those who routinely bad-mouth our state.”
In a post on Twitter, Democratic House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch of Hillside said it was time for members of the Republican Party to “start telling the truth.”
“People are actually finding Illinois to be a place to live, work and play,” Welch wrote. “The numbers show it.”
But some experts say jubilation over a modest increase is as shortsighted as bemoaning a slight decline. Despite being the population capital of the Midwest with, according to the new estimate, about 13 million residents, Illinois still lost a congressional seat after the census, and the state continues to have some out-migration issues, keeping it in a demographic quandary compared with other parts of the country.
“Our problem is we are not growing as fast as places like Florida and Texas,” said Cynthia Buckley, a sociology professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “When we think about (congressional) apportionment, we have to think about our growth relative to other states.”
Illinois was the only state in the Midwest to be undercounted, while two other Midwest states — Minnesota and Ohio — were likely overcounted, according to the survey. Other states that were undercounted were Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas. In addition to Minnesota and Ohio, the six other states that likely have fewer residents than initially recorded were Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island and Utah, the survey found.
The estimate that Illinois’ population was undercounted by 1.97%, or about 250,000, was the midpoint provided in the survey. The population could have been undercounted by as much as 440,000 people, or 3.43%, or as little as 65,000 people, or 0.51%, the survey showed.
While the census downturn reported last year gave the GOP something to crow about and the increase shown in last week’s survey gave Democrats a nice talking point, what will the practical import be of the new numbers?
Illinois lost one congressional seat, and that won’t change. In 1999, the Supreme Court ruled statistical sampling data cannot be used to reapportion Congress. But state leaders are likely to try to use the undercount to leverage federal officials for more funding over the coming decade — whether that actually happens remains to be seen.
Buckley said the upward adjustment is no surprise, given the difficult conditions of the 2020 census. Not only did it take place during the early months of the pandemic, but some potential respondents were alarmed by the Trump administration’s insistence on a question about citizenship, she said.
That question, which some interpreted as an attempt to intimidate immigrants into silence, never made it to the census form. But Brandon Lee of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which worked to boost census response, said it had an obvious impact.
“We noticed that every time the (citizenship question) came up in a lawsuit or every time Trump would say something about the census or the citizenship question, our community partners would get questions from people filling out the form,” he said. “It had an effect. It probably resulted in some people not filling out the form.”
The updated census numbers did not come with demographic or geographic specificity, so it’s not certain who the new residents are or where they settled. But Jay Young, executive director of Common Cause Illinois, said the growing parts of the state are obvious — they’re city neighborhoods such as the West Loop and some communities within Chicago’s collar counties.
At the same time, he said, it’s clear other areas have lost population, including rural counties, the Metro East region near St. Louis, and the South and West sides of Chicago.
“We will continue to see contraction (in some areas) but the state is growing,” he said. “Those suburban metropolitan areas do seem to be keeping our population growth positive.”
Though the flight of unhappy expatriates has been well-documented, Buckley said surveys suggest Illinois taxes aren’t driving the exodus.
“Tax rates alone aren’t going to be what gets you to move to Indiana,” she said. “If people were really fleeing Illinois because of taxes, we would see a much bigger drop in our population.”
Likewise, while violence has unquestionably driven some from the city, several newcomers say it hasn’t made them second-guess their move.
Sophie Gordon, 26, a St. Louis native who came to Chicago in 2019 by way of New York City, lives just a few blocks from the Near North Side McDonald’s that was the site of Thursday’s mass shooting that left two dead and seven injured. But she said she feels confident she can avoid danger.
“I don’t fear for my life walking around with my dog,” she said. “ … There are definitely pros and cons (to living in Chicago), but I’ve found that the pros outweigh the cons.”
Market researcher Brandon Nworjih, 23, came to Chicago from Long Island, New York, and said his crime worries were quickly overcome by his new hometown’s positive attributes, including its affordability.
“I wouldn’t have been able to get a condo in New York City,” said Nworjih, who lives in Uptown. “I’ve been screaming back to my New York friends to get them to come over.”
Carla Faustino, 30, who grew up in Palos Heights, made a move against the grain when she returned to the Chicago area last year from fast-growing Austin, Texas. Now living in Chicago’s Ravenswood neighborhood, she said her cost of living hasn’t really changed.
While she now pays a state income tax — Texas doesn’t have one — she’s also paying less in rent and in expenses for her car. She faces fewer toll roads and service fees in Illinois, she said, and government services, such as getting a driver’s license, work more smoothly here, she said.
“(Texas) seems really great on paper, but when you live there it doesn’t add up,” she said.
Buckley said rural parts of Illinois might someday see their own population jumps because of global developments, especially the Ukraine war, which has destabilized a large part of the world’s food supply.
Illinois farm counties could soon need more laborers and subsidiary businesses to pick up the slack, she said, and if that happens, it will demonstrate that population shifts can come from forces much stronger than the machinations of local politics.
“(The inflow) won’t be because of Pritzker,” she said. “That’s going to be because of Putin.”
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