Are you ready for a popular narrative to be shattered? Those that love to talk about how everyone is leaving Illinois will have some explaining to do as new data from the US Census shows that population in Illinois grew big time in 2024.
This has been and always will be a tricky state question. What is the smallest town in Illinois? It depends on who you ask, but there is an official answer and in Illinois, it's a tie between two tiny places that both have just 36 souls calling it home.
There's good news and bad news about a new population forecast for Illinois. The bad news is that the state is forecast to lose almost 400,000 residents in the next couple of decades. The good news is rentals should be easier to find.
If a new forecast is accurate, you can expect to see a lot more moving trucks crossing over into Missouri over the next 20 years or so as a population explosion is now being predicted.
The downtown area of cities used to be the fastest-growing places. Not so much anymore. That's definitely true of 3 Illinois downtown areas that were just ranked among the fastest shrinking places in America.
There is a narrative that the population of Illinois is shrinking. Don't tell that to one place in the Land of Lincoln that has an incredible growth rate of nearly 4,000 percent making it the fastest-growing area in Illinois.
I can't remember the year, but I recall that St. Louis used to be one of the 20 largest cities in America. Not anymore. How much has St. Louis shrunk? 70 cities in America now boast a larger population than the Gateway City.