The 2014 Thumbtack.com Small Business Friendliness Survey asked 13,000 small businesses across the U.S. to grade the friendliness of their state and locality. Illinois businesses gave the Land of Lincoln an F. Ever the golden child, Chicago earned a D+. These grades are unacceptable. Illinois’ small businesses are sounding the alarm for what’s causing Illinois’...

Gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner publicly opposes the tax-hike plan championed by Gov. Pat Quinn and House Speaker Mike Madigan. Rauner claimed that raising income taxes again in 2015 will cause more businesses and people to flee the state. Madigan fired back at Rauner with one of the most poorly-conceived statements of this campaign season. Madigan...

Illinois lost 7,800 private-sector jobs in April, and the state jobless rate fell to 7.9 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Illinois remains the worst in the Midwest and third-worst nationally for joblessness. Illinois’ private-sector jobs loss came against a gain of 1,000 government jobs, leaving the state with a net loss of...

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 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...

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...

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...