(WTVO) - Illinois’ population shrunk for the 9th year in a row from 2021 to 2022, according to new estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.
The report said that the Land of Lincoln lost more than 104,000 residents this year, according to the Journal Star. That brought the state’s population from 12.6 million to 12.5 million, the third-highest drop behind New York and California. Illinois was one of only 18 states that lost population this year.
However, it was a problem that was seen in the rest of the Midwest as well. Ohio and Michigan also lost some of their residents, though not as much as Illinois. Wisconsin and Indiana’s population actually grew in the last year.
Illinois has a history of residents moving out of the state. It has lost 10 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1930, and lost a congressional seat between 2010 and 2020. While Chicago did gain about 50,000 residents during that time, other cities like Rockford and Peoria reported population loses.
The Census estimated in May, however, that the state’s population was undercounted by about 2% during the 2020 Census, meaning that Illinois might have actually gained more than 250,000 residents since 2010. These estimates, though, were based on third-party data from Medicare, the IRS and other keepers of statistics, giving the numbers a margin of error, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Though Illinois lost residents from 2021-2022, the entire country ended up adding more than 1.2 million, estimates said. The Census Bureau said that a large reason for that was international migration returning to similar levels before the pandemic, as well as births outpacing deaths.
"It's welcome because we would have been back to almost flatline growth if not for this immigration," said William Frey, a demographer at The Brookings Institution.
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