The economy of

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...

is the fifth largest by GDP in the United States and one of the most diversified economies in the world. Fueled by the

economy of Chicago Chicago and its suburbs is home to 35 Fortune 500 companies and is a transportation and distribution center. Manufacturing, printing, publishing, insurance, transportation, financial trading and services, and food processing also play major ro ...

, the

Chicago metropolitan area The Chicago metropolitan area, also referred to as Chicagoland, is the largest metropolitan statistical area in the U.S. state of Illinois, and the Midwest, containing the City of Chicago along with its surrounding suburbs and satellite cities. ...

is home to many of the United States' largest companies, including

Abbott Laboratories Abbott Laboratories is an American multinational medical devices and health care company with headquarters in Abbott Park, Illinois, in the United States. The company was founded by Chicago physician Wallace Calvin Abbott in 1888 to formulate k ...

, AbbVie Inc.,

Allstate The Allstate Corporation is an American insurance company, headquartered in Glenview, Illinois (with a Northbrook, Illinois address) since 2022. Founded in 1931 as part of Sears, Roebuck and Co., it was spun off in 1993, but was still pa ...

Baxter International Baxter International Inc. is an American multinational healthcare company with headquarters in Deerfield, Illinois. The company primarily focuses on products to treat chronic and acute medical conditions. The company had 2023 global net sal ...

Conagra Conagra Brands, Inc. (formerly ConAgra Foods) is an American consumer packaged goods holding company headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Conagra makes and sells products under various brand names that are available in supermarkets, restaurants, ...

, Crate and Barrel,

Kraft Heinz The Kraft Heinz Company (KHC), commonly known as Kraft Heinz (), is an American multinational food company formed by the merger of Kraft Foods Group, Inc. and the H.J. Heinz Company co-headquartered in Chicago and Pittsburgh. Kraft Heinz is t ...

McDonald's McDonald's Corporation, doing business as McDonald's, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational fast food chain store, chain. As of 2024, it is the second largest by number of locations in the world, behind only the Chinese ch ...

CNH Industrial CNH Industrial N.V. is an Italian-American multinational corporation with global headquarters in Basildon, United Kingdom, but controlled and mostly owned by the multinational investment company Exor (company), Exor, which in turn is controlled ...

, GE Healthcare, Aon PLC,

Willis Towers Watson Willis Towers Watson plc, branded as WTW and stylised in its logo as wtw, is a British-American multinational company that provides commercial insurance brokerage services, strategic risk management services (such as contingency planning, sec ...

Mondelez International Mondelēz International, Inc. ( ) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational confectionery, food industry, food, Holding company, holding, drink industry, beverage and snack food company based in Chicago. Mondelez has an annual rev ...

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It was founded by brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin in 1928 and had been named Motorola since 1947. Many of Motorola's products had been ...

United Airlines United Airlines, Inc. is a Major airlines of the United States, major airline in the United States headquartered in Chicago, Chicago, Illinois that operates an extensive domestic and international route network across the United States and six ...

US Foods US Foods Holding Corp. (formerly known as U.S. Food service) is an American food service distributor founded in 1989. With approximately $24 billion in annual revenue, US Foods was the 10th largest private company in the US up until its IPO. ...

Walgreens Walgreens is an American pharmacy store chain. It is the second largest in the United States, behind CVS Pharmacy. As of March 2025, the company operated more than 8,700 stores in the U.S. Walgreens has been the subject of a number of lawsuit ...

, and more. The Chicago area is a global financial center and headquarters a wide variety of financial institutions including

Citadel LLC Citadel LLC (formerly known as Citadel Investment Group, LLC) is an American multinational hedge fund and financial services company. Founded in 1990 by Kenneth Griffin, it has more than $65 billion in assets under management . The company has ...

CNA Financial CNA Financial Corporation is a financial corporation based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its principal subsidiary, Continental Casualty Company (CCC), was founded in 1897, and The Continental Insurance Company (CIC) was organized in 1853. ...

, Discover Financial Services,

Morningstar, Inc. Morningstar, Inc. is an American financial services firm headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, founded by Joe Mansueto in 1984. It provides an array of investment research and investment management services. With operations in 29 countries, Mornin ...

, Nuveen, and more. Chicago is also home to the largest

futures exchange A futures exchange or futures market is a central financial exchange where people can trade standardized futures contracts defined by the exchange. Futures contracts are derivatives contracts to buy or sell specific quantities of a commodity or ...

in the world, the

Chicago Mercantile Exchange The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) (often called "the Chicago Merc", or "the Merc") is an American derivatives marketplace based in Chicago and located at 20 S. Wacker Drive. The CME was founded in 1898 as the Chicago Butter and Egg Board ...

. Across the state, other

Fortune 500 The ''Fortune'' 500 is an annual list compiled and published by ''Fortune (magazine), Fortune'' magazine that ranks 500 of the largest United States Joint-stock company#Closely held corporations and publicly traded corporations, corporations by ...

world headquarters based in Illinois include

State Farm State Farm Insurance is a group of mutual insurance companies throughout the United States with corporate headquarters in Bloomington, Illinois. Founded in 1922, it is the largest property and casualty insurance, property, casualty and auto i ...

in Bloomington and

John Deere Deere & Company, Trade name, doing business as John Deere (), is an American corporation that manufactures agricultural machinery, heavy equipment, forestry machinery, diesel engines, drivetrains (axles, Transmission (mechanical device), transmi ...

in Moline. As of 2017, Illinois ranked fourth in the nation for the most Fortune 500 based companies with a total of 36. For six consecutive years,

Chicagoland The Chicago metropolitan area, also referred to as Chicagoland, is the largest metropolitan statistical area in the U.S. state of Illinois, and the Midwest, containing the City of Chicago along with its surrounding suburbs and satellite cities ...

was ranked the nation's top metropolitan area for corporate relocations. The 2024 total

gross state product Gross regional domestic product (GRDP), gross domestic product of region (GDPR), or gross state product (GSP) is a statistic that measures the size of a region's economy. It is the aggregate of gross value added (GVA) of all resident producer unit ...

for Illinois was $1.132 trillion, placing it fifth in the nation. The 2021 median household income was $72,205, one of the nation's highest. In 2016, the nine counties of the Chicago metropolitan area accounted for 77.3% of the state's total wages, with the remaining 93 counties at 22.7%. The state's industrial outputs include machinery,

food processing Food processing is the transformation of agricultural products into food, or of one form of food into other forms. Food processing takes many forms, from grinding grain into raw flour, home cooking, and complex industrial methods used in the mak ...

, electrical equipment, chemical products, publishing, fabricated metal products and transportation equipment. Corn and soybeans are important agricultural products. Service industries of note are financial trading,

higher education Tertiary education (higher education, or post-secondary education) is the educational level following the completion of secondary education. The World Bank defines tertiary education as including universities, colleges, and vocational schools ...

logistics Logistics is the part of supply chain management that deals with the efficient forward and reverse flow of goods, services, and related information from the point of origin to the Consumption (economics), point of consumption according to the ...

, and

medicine Medicine is the science and Praxis (process), practice of caring for patients, managing the Medical diagnosis, diagnosis, prognosis, Preventive medicine, prevention, therapy, treatment, Palliative care, palliation of their injury or disease, ...

Agriculture

Most of the state of Illinois lies outside the

and inside the North American

Corn Belt The Corn Belt is a region of the Midwestern United States and part of the Southern United States that, since the 1850s, has dominated corn production in the United States. In North America, ''corn'' is the common word for maize. More genera ...

. Corn, soybeans, and other large-field

crops A crop is a plant that can be grown and harvested extensively for profit or subsistence. In other words, a crop is a plant or plant product that is grown for a specific purpose such as food, fibre, or fuel. When plants of the same species a ...

are grown extensively. These crops and their products account for much of the state's economic output outside Chicago. Much of the field crop is remanufactured into feed for hogs and

cattle Cattle (''Bos taurus'') are large, domesticated, bovid ungulates widely kept as livestock. They are prominent modern members of the subfamily Bovinae and the most widespread species of the genus '' Bos''. Mature female cattle are calle ...

. Dairy products and wheat are important secondary crops in specific segments of the state. In addition, some Illinois farmers grow specialty crops such as

popcorn Popcorn (also called popped corn, popcorns, or pop-corn) is a variety of corn kernel which expands and puffs up when heated. The term also refers to the snack food produced by the expansion. It is one of the oldest snacks, with evidence of p ...

and

pumpkin A pumpkin is a cultivar, cultivated winter squash in the genus ''Cucurbita''. The term is most commonly applied to round, orange-colored squash varieties, but does not possess a scientific definition. It may be used in reference to many dif ...

s. The state is the largest producer of pumpkins among the U.S. states. There is a large

watermelon The watermelon (''Citrullus lanatus'') is a species of flowering plant in the family Cucurbitaceae, that has a large, edible fruit. It is a Glossary of botanical terms#scandent, scrambling and trailing vine-like plant, and is plant breeding ...

growing area centered on

Lincoln, Illinois Lincoln is a city in Logan County, Illinois, United States. First settled in the 1830s, it is the only town in the U.S. that was named for Abraham Lincoln before he became President of the United States, president; he practiced law there from 18 ...

. Illinois wine is a growing industry. In December 2006, the Shawnee Hills were named Illinois's first

American Viticultural Area An American Viticultural Area (AVA) is a designated wine grape-growing region in the United States, providing an official appellation for the mutual benefit of winery, wineries and consumers. Winemakers frequently want their consumers to know abo ...

(AVA).

Manufacturing

Manufacturing in Illinois accounts for 14% of the state's total output and generates $101 billion in economic activity. Illinois's manufacturing sector grew out of its agricultural production. A key piece of infrastructure for several generations was the

Union Stock Yards The Union Stock Yard & Transit Co., or The Yards, was the meatpacking district in Chicago for more than a century, starting in 1865. The district was formed by a group of railroad companies that acquired marshland and turned it into a vast cen ...

of Chicago, which from 1865 until 1971 penned and slaughtered millions of cattle and hogs into standardized cuts of

beef Beef is the culinary name for meat from cattle (''Bos taurus''). Beef can be prepared in various ways; Cut of beef, cuts are often used for steak, which can be cooked to varying degrees of doneness, while trimmings are often Ground beef, grou ...

and

pork Pork is the culinary name for the meat of the pig (''Sus domesticus''). It is the most commonly consumed meat worldwide, with evidence of pig animal husbandry, husbandry dating back to 8000–9000 BCE. Pork is eaten both freshly cooke ...

. In 1893 Illinois manufacturers formed the Illinois Manufacturers' Association in opposition to the Sweatshop Law of 1893 that prohibited

child labor Child labour is the exploitation of children through any form of work that interferes with their ability to attend regular school, or is mentally, physically, socially and morally harmful. Such exploitation is prohibited by legislation w ...

and mandated an eight-hour workday. Governor Peter Altgeld had made

Florence Kelley Florence Molthrop Kelley (September 12, 1859 – February 17, 1932) was an American social and political reformer who coined the term wage abolitionism. Her work against sweatshops and for the minimum wage, eight-hour workdays, and children's ...

the Chief Factory Inspector for the state of Illinois. The association sponsored a number of cases which led to the

Illinois Supreme Court The Supreme Court of Illinois is the state supreme court, the highest court of the judiciary of Illinois. The court's authority is granted in Article VI of the current Illinois Constitution, which provides for seven justices elected from the fiv ...

finding that Section 5 of the Act, which limited women's working weeks to 48 hours and their day to eight hours, unconstitutional in 1895. After Governor Altgeld was not re-elected in 1896 and Kelley was removed from her position, flagrant violations of the child labor provision were reported. The centralized location of Illinois made it a key manufacturing hub, especially for

farm machinery Agricultural machinery relates to the machine (mechanical), mechanical structures and devices used in farming or other agriculture. There are list of agricultural machinery, many types of such equipment, from hand tools and power tools to tractor ...

and specialty

motor vehicle A motor vehicle, also known as a motorized vehicle, automotive vehicle, automobile, or road vehicle, is a self-propelled land vehicle, commonly wheeled, that does not operate on railway track, rails (such as trains or trams), does not fly (such ...

s. Smaller Cities like Aurora, Peoria, Decatur, Rockford and other cities became major manufacturing centers in the 20th century. In downstate Illinois, the

Company became one of the world's largest makers of farm machinery, and

Caterpillar Caterpillars ( ) are the larval stage of members of the order Lepidoptera (the insect order comprising butterflies and moths). As with most common names, the application of the word is arbitrary, since the larvae of sawflies (suborder ...

achieved similar dominance in its diversified line of

off-road vehicle An off-road vehicle (ORV), also known as an off-highway vehicle (OHV), overland vehicle or adventure vehicle, is a type of transportation specifically engineered to navigate unpaved roads and surfaces. These include trails, forest roads, and ...

s. The Chicago area, meanwhile, began to produce significant quantities of telecommunications gear, electronics, steel, automobiles, and industrial products. As of 2004, the leading manufacturing industries in Illinois, based upon value-added, were chemical manufacturing ($16.6 billion), food manufacturing ($14.4 billion), machinery manufacturing ($13.6 billion), fabricated metal products ($10.5 billion), plastics and rubber products ($6.8 billion), transportation equipment ($6.7 billion), and computer and electronic products ($6.4 billion).

Renewable energy

Illinois currently ranks second in the Midwest for total installed renewable power capacity and fifth nationally for installed wind power capacity. The

renewable energy Renewable energy (also called green energy) is energy made from renewable resource, renewable natural resources that are replenished on a human lifetime, human timescale. The most widely used renewable energy types are solar energy, wind pow ...

economy has created 114,000 jobs in Illinois and will continue to see growth after a $15 billion investment from the Future Energy Jobs Act in 2016. Governor J. B. Pritzker committed Illinois to the U.S. Climate Alliance in 2019 which will further drive economic growth in

across the state.

Services

2006-06-07 840x1500 chicago aon building

By the early 2000s, Illinois's economy had moved toward a dependence on high-value-added services such as financial trading,

, and

. In some cases, these services clustered around institutions that hearkened back to Illinois's earlier economies. In the late 2010s, the

Chicago Metropolitan Area The Chicago metropolitan area, also referred to as Chicagoland, is the largest metropolitan statistical area in the U.S. state of Illinois, and the Midwest, containing the City of Chicago along with its surrounding suburbs and satellite cities. ...

continued to lead the nation in luring corporate relocations or expanded corporate facilities.

Tourism

In 2018, Illinois set a new tourism record with 117 million tourists which represented a 3 million person increase from the previous year. Visitors spent nearly $42 billion in spending the same year.

Flash index

The Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the

University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United States. Established in 1867, it is the f ...

publishes a "flash-index" that aims to measure expected economic growth in Illinois. The indicators used are corporate earnings,

consumer spending Consumer spending is the total money spent on final goods and services by individuals and households. There are two components of consumer spending: induced consumption (which is affected by the level of income) and autonomous consumption (which ...

and

personal income In economics, personal income refers to the total earnings of an individual from various sources such as wages, investment ventures, and other sources of income. It encompasses all the products and money received by an individual. Personal inco ...

. These indicators are measured through tax receipts, adjusted for

inflation In economics, inflation is an increase in the average price of goods and services in terms of money. This increase is measured using a price index, typically a consumer price index (CPI). When the general price level rises, each unit of curre ...

. 100 is the base, so a number above 100 represents growth in the Illinois economy, and a number below 100 represents a shrinking economy.http://www.igpa.uiuc.edu/programs/flashindex.asp IGPA Flash Index Data from the

index Index (: indexes or indices) may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional entities * Index (''A Certain Magical Index''), a character in the light novel series ''A Certain Magical Index'' * The Index, an item on the Halo Array in the ...

, from 6/1981 to the present, can be foun
here

References

{{Economy of the United States by jurisdiction