Illinois City Shrinking So Fast 1 in 10 Have Left in Past 5 Years

Populations come and go as life happens, but one specific Illinois city is shrinking so fast one out of every ten residents has left in the past 5 years alone.

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Yahoo Finance recently shared the 5 cities in America that have had their population decrease the most. Out of that list, one sits prominently in Illinois in an infamous position of having 10% of its population decide to take their lives somewhere else.

What Illinois city am I talking about?

It's none other than Aurora, Illinois.

From 2017 through 2022, the study says "Aurora faced a population decrease of nearly 10.0%". Staggering. Wayne and Garth would be so disappointed that their hometown has fallen so far. Honey, someone shrunk Wayne's World.

The statistics include "births, deaths and migration" meaning it's not entirely people packing moving trucks, but that's the situation in every city measured so Aurora really doesn't have any excuse.

Why are so many residents leaving Aurora, Illinois?

The Chicago Tribune explored this topic earlier this year and there didn't seem to be a solid conclusion. Low percentages of citizens responding to census requests was mentioned. An article years ago mentioned that downtown Aurora was really the only area with room to grow and it...hasn't.

This new census data is troubling for Aurora as a 5-year snapshot is a bigger sample size for a city that is not just trending downward, but hemorrhaging people wanting to call it home.