Community Corner
Chicago's Incredible Shrinking Population: City Loses Residents For 3rd Consecutive Year
Chicago was the only major U.S city with a declining population in 2016, according to Census data released Thursday.
CHICAGO, IL — While it remains the third-largest city in the country, Chicago saw another annual decrease in residents, the third consecutive year the city saw its population decline, according to data released by the U.S. Census Burea on Thursday. Chicago's 2016 population also earned the city the dubious distinction of being the only city among the country's top 20 largest to see a decrease, the bureau reported.
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According to Census data, 2,704,958 people called Chicago home in 2016, a decrease of 8,638 residents from 2015 and 4,934 less people the year before that. And the city's dwindling number of residents illustrates the larger national trends affecting the state, the region and the country, the Chicago Tribune reports. The greater Chicago area — which includes the city's suburbs, as well as parts of Northwest Indiana and southern Wisconsin — saw the largest annual drop of any U.S. metro area, reflecting the country's slowed urban growth, the report stated. Illinois also saw the biggest annual decrease of any state in 2016 as more people migrated to the warmer, southern climates of Texas, Arizona and Florida, the report added.
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But even cities seeing population gains weren't seeing those increases at the same robust rates of the past. For instance, experts believed Houston, currently the fourth-largest U.S. city with 2,303,482 people in 2016, would soon outpace Chicago in population, the Tribune reports. While that might still happen, it probably won't occur within the next 10 years as some had been predicting, as "big city growth" has stalled nationally, the report added.
So why are Chicagoans abandoning the city? Crime, taxes, unemployment and, yes, cold, Midwest winters were some of the reasons given in a Tribune survey of former residents.
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