Illinois’ 2011 income tax hike helped put the brakes on the state’s private-sector jobs recovery. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Illinois’ monthly job creation has slowed down since the 2011 tax hike. Meanwhile, the rest of the country has accelerated its jobs growth. The Great Recession began in January 2008, and...
CEOs of major U.S. corporations went on record in Chief Executive Magazine’s “2014 Best and Worst States for Business.” Business leaders pulled no punches in their description of Illinois, going so far as to compare doing business in Illinois to doing business in a third-world country. The publication ranked Illinois at the bottom of the...
Illinois is bracing to lose another 776 jobs in the next few months. OfficeMax Inc. reported that it will lay off 137 workers in Ottawa. Naperville-based OfficeMax Inc. and Office Depot Inc., based in Boca Raton, Fla., merged in late 2013, and the company chose to locate its headquarters in Florida – not Illinois. Last...
Illinois has a domestic migration problem. The state is losing too many people. Illinois has lost more people to other states than it gained in every single year since 1985 . And in every year, the people who left earned more money than the people who entered. The Internal Revenue Service released new migration data...
On Tuesday, Chicago’s City Council’s joint committee on License and Consumer Protection and Transportation and Public Way passed a deeply flawed proposal to regulate the pedicab industry after hours of largely opposing testimony. On Wednesday, the measure passed the full City Council without any changes, showing that Chicago is neither serious about promoting “green” transportation...
Not only does the White House overstate the potential benefits of increasing the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour – but it also fails to mention that there would be fewer people working. According to a recent report from the Congressional Budget Office, 16 million Americans – not the White House’s reported 28 million...
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a gain of 288,000 payroll jobs nationally for the month of April, better than consensus expectations of a gain of 218,000. The national jobless rate dropped to 6.3 percent from 6.7 percent. The month-over-month gain in payroll jobs was the best since January 2012. However, the entire decline in...
Chicago alderman recently passed a deeply flawed ordinance that that arbitrarily limits the number of pedicabs and forbids their operation in a significant portion of downtown. These new rules are hitting drivers hard, and limiting their ability to make a living. Without a change, many drivers could be out of business. Show your support for...
In one in five U.S. families, no one has a job. Not mom. Not dad. Not grandma or grandpa. No one. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in 2013, there were nearly 81 million families in the United States. Of that number, about 16 million families reported that nobody in their household had a...
Gallup released a stunning poll that shows 50 percent of Illinoisans want to leave the state, the highest percentage of any state nationally. This comes a week after Illinois’ worst-in-the nation performance in a Gallup poll that showed one in four Illinoisans consider Illinois to be the worst possible place to live. If Illinois government...
Illinoisans are frustrated. But the depths of that frustration may not have been evident until now. According to a recent Gallup survey: “Illinois has the unfortunate distinction of being the state with the highest percentage of residents who say it is the worst possible place to live. One in four Illinois residents (25%) say the state is...
A Chicago City Council committee will consider a new set of restrictions on pedicabs at a hearing this week. Many specifics of the proposal, introduced by 44th Ward Alderman Tom Tunney, are unexceptional, but two provisions stand out as unnecessarily harmful to the pedicab market and consumer choice. For one, the ordinance arbitrarily caps the...
Do high taxes help or hinder a state? The Fiscal Policy Center at Voices for Illinois Children thinks high taxes are a good thing. The group released a study recently claiming that states that levy high personal income taxes outperform states that don’t tax income at all. They use their study as a justification for...
Internal Revenue Service migration data for the 2010 tax year shows that Illinois continues to lose people to other states. Illinois had a net loss of 49,000 residents to other states, along with a net loss of $1.9 billion in personal income. Not only did Illinois lose more people than it gained, but the state also...