Illinois is Losing Tons People but Just How Big is Illinois?

Illinois is decreasing in population BUT I think it will still shock you just how large Illinois is compared to the rest of the United States.

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The 2020 census data is beginning to come out and I for one am a total nerd over numbers like population growths, and decreases. I love seeing where people are moving too and where they are moving from, it can tell you a lot about what people find important in their lives currently. When I looked at the data about Illinois and the other Tri-State states I was pretty shocked.

According to the census Illinois has a population of 12.67 million people which ranks Illinois 6th in the United States for population, only behind California, Texas, Florida, New York, and Pennsylvania. Interesting enough, Illinois is ONLY 200K people behind Pennsylvania, and frankly Illinois is well ahead of all the other Midwestern states. In fact if you COMBINE the population of Missouri at 6.13 million with the population of Iowa at 3.15 million, you would still be almost 3 million people short of Illinois. Now a lot of people will say well that's basically the population of Chicago (which is true) but that proves my point that Illinois is wayyyyy more than just Chicago. Because if you take out Chicago then Illinois has the same population as Missouri and Iowa combined, that's a crazy stat.

In saying all this I still think it's important for the state of Illinois to figure this issue of losing people to other states out, for the first time in Illinois history it lost population during a 10 year census period (according to Wikipedia) that is obviously not good. But lets try and take a breath and not just try and paint a total "doom and gloom" picture for the Land of Lincoln just yet.