Illinois - Chicago, Prairie Agriculture, and 12.7 Million Residents
Chicago defines Illinois in the national imagination, but the state stretches 390 miles from Wisconsin to the Ohio River confluence. About 12.7 million people live here, making it the sixth most populous state. Metro Chicago holds roughly 9.5 million of that total. The rest of the state is overwhelmingly agricultural, with corn and soybean fields covering the flat glacial till of central and southern Illinois. Springfield, the state capital, sits 200 miles southwest of Chicago and has a population under 120,000.
Chicago is the third largest city in the United States and a global center for finance, commodities trading, and transportation logistics. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade handle enormous daily volumes in futures and options. O'Hare International Airport competes annually with Atlanta and Dubai for the title of world's busiest. The city's architecture, from the pioneering skyscrapers of the late 1800s to Mies van der Rohe's modernist towers, draws architecture students and tourists year-round. The University of Chicago, Northwestern, and the Illinois Institute of Technology anchor a research and education cluster.
Downstate Illinois operates on a fundamentally different economic model. Caterpillar maintains major operations in the Peoria area. John Deere's world headquarters sits just across the Mississippi River in Moline, drawing from a labor pool on both sides of the Illinois-Iowa border. State Farm is headquartered in Bloomington. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a leading research institution, produces a steady stream of engineering and computer science graduates who feed both local and national employers.
The state has experienced net population loss in recent years, driven by outmigration to lower-tax and lower-cost states. Illinois carries one of the highest pension liabilities of any state, a structural issue that has shaped its fiscal politics for decades. Cook County, which includes Chicago, accounts for a disproportionate share of the state's economic output and tax revenue.
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Chicago defines Illinois in the national imagination, but the state stretches 390 miles from Wisconsin to the Ohio River confluence. About 12.7 million people live here, making it the sixth most populous state. Metro Chicago holds roughly 9.5 million of that total. The rest of the state is overwhelmingly agricultural, with corn and soybean fields covering the flat glacial till of central and southern Illinois. Springfield, the state capital, sits 200 miles southwest of Chicago and has a population under 120,000.
Chicago is the third largest city in the United States and a global center for finance, commodities trading, and transportation logistics. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade handle enormous daily volumes in futures and options. O'Hare International Airport competes annually with Atlanta and Dubai for the title of world's busiest. The city's architecture, from the pioneering skyscrapers of the late 1800s to Mies van der Rohe's modernist towers, draws architecture students and tourists year-round. The University of Chicago, Northwestern, and the Illinois Institute of Technology anchor a research and education cluster.
Downstate Illinois operates on a fundamentally different economic model. Caterpillar maintains major operations in the Peoria area. John Deere's world headquarters sits just across the Mississippi River in Moline, drawing from a labor pool on both sides of the Illinois-Iowa border. State Farm is headquartered in Bloomington. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a leading research institution, produces a steady stream of engineering and computer science graduates who feed both local and national employers.
The state has experienced net population loss in recent years, driven by outmigration to lower-tax and lower-cost states. Illinois carries one of the highest pension liabilities of any state, a structural issue that has shaped its fiscal politics for decades. Cook County, which includes Chicago, accounts for a disproportionate share of the state's economic output and tax revenue.
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