Once, Lake County and Illinois were magnets for those seeking work and good-paying jobs. They left behind old lives to begin anew in the Land of Lincoln.
Making the trek back then were Michiganders from Iron Mountain and Crystal Falls, in the mining region of the Upper Peninsula; Alabamans from Red Bay; African Americans from the Mississippi Delta; Iowa and Indiana farm boys and girls; Armenians from Massachusetts.
In Lake County, they got jobs at Outboard Marine, Johns Manville, the Navy base, the VA hospital, the U.S. Steel Wire Mill, Abbott Laboratories, among others. Illinois cities flourished with Caterpillar, Barber-Greene, BorgWarner, International Harvester, Western Electric, the steel mills of South Chicago, Motorola and John Deere.
Most of them are gone, lost during the Rust Belt years of the 1980s, or have become leaner and meaner over the decades. Illinois, once an industrial leader, has become an afterthought to captains of industry planning to make sizable investments of new factories or research facilities.
Wisconsin, it seems, is the new Illinois.
Before long, many of you will be commuting north to work as companies with long pedigrees here head for the border or new firms plant their roots in Wisconsin within striking distance of Illinois.
Take, for instance, Taiwanese electronics supplier Foxconn, which announced last week it will build a gigantic factory to make flat-panel display screens for televisions, cellphones, tablets and other electronic devices either in Kenosha or Racine county. Oddly, Warwick Industries, once near the Zion lakefront, used to make televisions that were shipped around the globe.
After Wisconsin officials did the usual dog-and-pony show touting the $10 billion Foxconn investment, which will reportedly create 13,000 jobs paying an average of $53,875 annually, all the economic-development folks in Illinois could do was smile politely. They were bested, once again, by our neighbors to the north.
Yet, the Illinois folks noted with pride that Illinois didn’t have to dole out millions upon millions of tax breaks to lure Foxconn here. They also pointed out Illinois has an educated work force, and many Lake Countians will probably be employed at the Foxconn facility.
Of course, those workers will. Just as Abbott Laboratories and AbbVie currently remain the largest employers of Kenosha County residents.
But that’s not the point. Illinois, through decades of neglect from both political parties, is on the verge of losing its economic development edge. High taxes, especially high business taxes and regulations, don’t make Illinois inviting to companies.
It’s not only businesses skipping out on our state.
The nation’s population has grown by nearly 5 percent since 2010, but for the third consecutive year, Illinois lost more residents in 2016 than it gained. These aren’t all retirees searching for sun and sand in their golden years.
Places like Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon, are gaining double-digit increases in population. Ever been to those places in the winter? It rains. A lot.
It’s not only young people — those not living with mom and dad — packing up. It’s middle age Illinoisans who say, “Once the kids are out of school, we’re out of this state.” While U.S. home prices recently hit a record high increase of 5.7 percent, the Chicago area reported the smallest increase, 3.3 percent.
Not only are big operators, like Foxconn, ignoring Illinois as a place to do business, but smaller companies, too. The Associated Press reported last month that a steel firm in the southwest Cook County suburb of Bedford Park wants to move to Indiana and build a 250,000-square-foot factory. Alliance Steel Corp. employs 100 workers at good-paying jobs.
A hundred workers here and there leaving Illinois eventually adds up in the long run. That’s something which doesn’t seem to concern many of our elected state legislators and leaders, who continue to look toward casinos, legalizing marijuana and boosting taxes to rescue them from themselves.
Charles Selle is a former News-Sun reporter, political editor and editor.
Twitter @sellenews
