Illinois Sees Record 2021 Population Loss: Census Bureau

ILLINOIS — Illinois is losing people in droves. According to the U.S. Census, the state's population declined by about a record 113,776 between July 2020 and July 2021 — about the population of the city of Elgin.

Illinois was one of 20 states, plus the District of Columbia, to lose residents by domestic migration, but only New York and California had more residents pack up and leave, according to the Census.

The country's population, meanwhile, grew at the slowest rate since the country's founding, adding just 392,665 people over the last year. Census officials blamed decreased immigration, lower birth rates, and the astounding death toll of the COVID-19 pandemic.

More than 812,283 Americans have lost their lives to the virus — more than died in World War I, World War II, Vietnam, Korea, and the Afghanistan and Iraq wars combined.

“Population growth has been slowing for years because of lower birth rates and decreasing net international migration, all while mortality rates are rising due to the aging of the nation’s population,” said Census demographer Kristie Wilder said in a statement. “Now, with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, this combination has resulted in a historically slow pace of growth.”

(Source: U.S. Census Bureau)

As of Thursday, more than 27,000 Illinoisans had lost their lives to the pandemic.

RELATED: IL Sees Most COVID-19 Hospitalizations Of 2021 As Omicron Surges

According to Census officials, Illinois' population was 12,671,469 as of July 1. That's about a percent less than the July 2020 number, which was also revised down from the April 2020 estimate of 12,812,508 that led to the state losing a representative in Congress.

A report issued earlier this year by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning showed Illinois has lost more residents since 2010 than all but one state — West Virginia.

Most of the people leaving the state have been downstate residents. But while Chicago and its suburbs have seen smaller population declines, according to the report, it still ranks 46th out of the country's 50 largest metropolitan areas for growth.

Earlier this year, Gov. J.B. Pritzker blamed population loss on unaffordable college.

"I looked very closely at the numbers of people, who they are, where they come from, why they're leaving, and what you see when you look at the out-migration is, actually, the largest portion of the population that was moving out were young people who were choosing to go to college out of state because they couldn't afford to go to college in Illinois," he said. "We weren't making it affordable enough."

Pritzker said the state's best students were being offered full scholarships out of state and that his administration has increased scholarship funding to make the state more competitive.

"Just when that was starting to take effect, COVID hit," the governor said.

The pandemic hit the state's economy hard, with unemployment spiking to 16.5 percent at its worst. But, despite more than 6 million new jobs created nationally in 2021, Illinois ranks near the bottom for its economic recovery. The state's unemployment rate remains about 60 percent higher than pre-pandemic and well above the national average, with about 354,000 Illinoisans out of a job, according to the Illinois Department of Employment Security.