Cook County, Illinois — home to Chicago and numerous suburbs — is losing population as individuals and families seek safer, more prosperous locales, and in the process, take with them billions of dollars in taxable income, according to IRS data analyzed by Open the Books (OTB).

“We usually measure migration by counting how many people leave. But that’s only part of the picture. When people move, they don’t just relocate — they take their income, spending power, and economic impact with them. A survey of 2,315 counties using data published by the IRS demonstrates billions of dollars in adjusted gross income (AGI) have been leaving counties that house major urban centers,” OTB reports.

Cook County topped the list, losing $4.3 billion in taxable adjusted gross income (AGI), followed by Los Angeles County, California, at $4.2 billion, Santa Clara County, California, at nearly $2.8 billion, Manhattan County, New York, also at $2.8 billion, and San Francisco County, California, at $1.8 billion.

“These are not marginal shifts. They represent massive economic outflows from some of the country’s most productive regions. As people pack up and move, their taxable income is headed elsewhere. More spending power is disappearing. More long-term economic capacity is being relocated. Many of the counties experiencing the largest losses share common traits. They are large urban centers, high-cost regions, and major economic hubs,” OTB said.

Two other traits these population- and taxable income-losing counties share are having lots of government employees and being solidly blue in the 2024 presidential election, with Democratic nominee Kamala Harris sweeping the top five by comfortable margins.

“San Francisco County has a massive 133 government workers per 1,000 residents, 73 more than the average overall of 48. New York County has even more at 136 per thousand. King County has 76 per thousand, still 17 more than average. Just a bit further down the list of losers is another usual suspect: Washington, DC with a predictably high 335 government employees per thousand residents and net negative $702,074 in AGI,” according to OTB.

By comparison, the top five population-gaining counties show significant expansions of their tax bases thanks to the inflow of new households. The biggest gainer is Palm Beach County, Florida, gaining nearly $3 billion in new taxable income sources, with Collier County, Florida, next with a gain of more than $1.7 billion, followed by Maricopa County, Arizona, at $1.4 billion, Clark County, Nevada, at $1.2 billion, and Denton County, Texas, also at $1.2 billion.

On their per capita government employees, Palm Beach has just 39, Collier County has 67, Maricopa has 46, Clark County has 48, and Denton County 44, thus with three below the average of 48, one even with it, and one above it.

In a related analysis of IRS data, OTB reported that “counties with the highest concentrations of government workers — defined as more than 1.5 times the national median of 58.9 civilian government employees per 1,000 residents — have significantly higher poverty rates, lower median incomes, and are losing residents at a significant rate. Counties with the lowest concentrations of government workers show the opposite pattern. This finding is consistent across two separate years of federal poverty and income data.”

In related news, in its latest ranking of the 50 states according to their economic opportunity, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has Utah as the top jurisdiction, followed by Tennessee, Idaho, North Carolina, Arizona, Arkansas, Indiana, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Florida. The bottom 10 states, those with the lowest economic opportunity rating by ALEC, included New York at the bottom rung, followed by New Jersey, Vermont, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Hawaii, Maryland, and Rhode Island.

In the ALEC ranking, Maryland and Virginia, the two states surrounding the District of Columbia and the national capital, have high numbers of federal employees and retirees. Maryland is ranked 42nd in the ALEC calculations, while Virginia comes in at 31st. Maryland is home to almost 145,000 federal workers, while Virginia has more than 475,000.