Pension Costs Will Hit Home: Charting Illinois’s Pension Crisis

Download a pdf of this report and chart here. The required pension payment for Chicago city government and Chicago Public Schools will jump to $1.92 billion from $650 million between now and 2020. Current law will require local taxpayers to foot the bill. That’s a citywide per capita jump to $715 from $241. Illinois is...

Download a pdf of this report and chart here.

The required pension payment for Chicago city government and Chicago Public Schools will jump to $1.92 billion from $650 million between now and 2020. Current law will require local taxpayers to foot the bill. That’s a citywide per capita jump to $715 from $241.

Illinois is facing its own pension crisis that Chicago residents, through their state taxes, are responsible for funding. The Illinois pension payment will jump to $7.45 billion from $4.50 billion, a statewide per capita jump to $581 from $351.

In 2011 in Chicago the per capita amount due in state and local taxes for the pensions of city, school district and state government workers will equal $592. By 2020, that number will jump to $1,296. In an average (2.6 person) household, that means the amount of taxes paid annually for state and local pensions will jump to $3,369, up nearly 119 percent from today’s burdensome amount of $1,539.