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Why Young People Are Leaving Illinois
by Lilly Pate
When I decided to attend college in Missouri, I thought I was simply leaving home. What I didn’t realize was that I was joining a growing exodus of young Illinoisans who are increasingly looking for opportunity beyond our state’s borders.
This trend is more than anecdotal. According to a 2023 analysis by Illinois Policy, Illinois ranked 48th in population change, losing over 32,000 residents and trailing only California and New York. Dig deeper and the numbers are even more troubling: in just four years, Illinois has lost 146,000 working-age residents, a two percent decline and sixth-worst in the nation.
For years, illegal immigration has masked some of this population loss. But beneath the surface, Illinois is hemorrhaging skilled, educated citizens. Despite world-class universities and strong job markets, young people are still packing up and leaving. Illinois ranks second in the nation for the percentage of college freshmen who choose to leave the state and nearly half of our high school graduates who attend four-year colleges do so in other states. That’s despite having 12 public universities and 93 private institutions that people around the world dream of attending.
Illinois’s average in-state tuition rate is around $15,000, over $5,000 more than the national average and the third most expensive state to obtain a college degree in the entire country. Many students end up choosing schools in neighboring states such as Missouri, Indiana, and Iowa for similar costs.
Pursuing an education out of state does not mean that students are bringing the skills they have learned home. According to a study by the Illinois Board of Higher Education, 1/3 of students who go to out-of-state schools take out-of-state jobs. It’s likely that these people will get married, raise a family and settle outside of the Prairie State. The sad truth is that Illinois pours billions into funding K-12 education -- only to see its graduates leave and never come back.
Along with pursuing affordable higher education there is another obvious reason for the massive Illinois exodus: out-of-control taxes. A new study from WalletHub found that Illinois has the highest state and local tax rates on its residents in the entire country. There is not another place in the United States with worse taxation. The report highlighted Illinois’ continued hikes on families including being 50th in the nation for real estate taxes, 47th for income taxes and the second highest gas taxes in the country.
These overwhelming figures leave Illinois families paying $9,488 in taxes per year on average, about 15% of each household’s income. Illinois Democrat’s chronic overspending and mismanagement of our state budget has led them to treating families like a personal piggy bank and forcing them to flee the state for better opportunities and cheaper living.
When I chose to leave for college, I thought it was a personal decision. Now I realize it’s part of a broader generational shift -- one fueled by unaffordable education, suffocating taxes, and the failure of state leadership to address these long-standing issues.
Until Illinois gets serious about making higher education affordable, fixing its broken tax system, and curbing reckless spending, it won’t just lose numbers in a census report. It will continue losing its future. Because right now, Illinois’s biggest export isn’t corn, soybeans, or manufactured goods. It’s our young people.
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