Chicago net migration trends

[Ryan Bird]

I’m interested in investing in northwest suburbs of Chicago but recently read a 2022 year end report that take about negative net migration in Illinois, specifically in cook county and city of Chicago. I could see such articles on population decline from 2017 so looks like it’s not something new.

As an investor, how would these migration reports impact your investment decisions in Chicago or suburbs? Most of the real estate videos/podcasts suggest that I should look at cities with positive net migration so curious on why would someone continue to invest in Chicago or suburbs?

[Bob Floss II]

This again? January of every year someone posts an article about how Illinois and Chicago are losing population. I did a deep dive back in 2018 and found some data comes from the census, but most of the data of population movement comes from moving companies. When I looked further, the same data showed Illinois had a medium or high level of outbound population since 1977. Chicago couldn't possibly maintain status as the third most populated city in the US if we have experienced population loss for 45 straight years. The data fails to account for undocumented inbound movement that is not tracked by census or moving companies.

We have arguably nine major universities, a couple dozen local community colleges, eleven medical schools, seven law schools, and eleven theology schools that attract tens of thousands of students every year that don't use movers for their mini fridge and futon. The data also reflected almost no movement in or out of Illinois for anyone under an income level of $49,000. Around 45% of those tracked in the data made over $150,000. Lower income, undocumented, or ESL population also have a track record of not participating in census data collection. Add all this up, and you end up with a huge gap of population movement unaccounted for and produces flawed results.