 Illinois is home to the headquarters of 36 Fortune 500 companies in 2017,
according to Fortune’s list of the top companies by annual revenue released June
7. This gives Illinois the fourth most Fortune 500 headquarters of any state.
Yet despite this significant corporate presence, Illinois lags in blue-collar
job opportunities.
Ten Illinois-based Fortune 500 companies, such as Boeing and Archer Daniels
Midland, are headquartered in Chicago, while others, including Walgreens Boots
Alliance and Deere are located in the suburbs or downstate. New to the list is
Oakbrook-based TreeHouse Foods, a food processing company that entered the
Fortune 500 shortly after buying Illinois-based ConAgra’s private-label food
business in 2015.
Some Illinois-based companies rose in the rankings from 2016, such as Walgreens
Boots Alliance (up 2 to 17th), State Farm Insurance (up 2 to 33rd), and Exelon
(up 6 to 89th). Others, such as Caterpillar (down 15 to 74th), Deere (down 8 to
105th), and Mondelez International (down 15 to 109th), fell drastically from
2016 due to economic weakness in their respective sectors.
Despite this large presence of corporate headquarters, Illinois’ middle class
continues to struggle amid weak economic growth. While corporate headquarters
may provide jobs for high-level corporate management and executives, they do not
provide the blue-collar jobs needed to support the state’s working-class
families. Illinois has the worst manufacturing jobs recovery in the region,
driven by the most expensive workers’ compensation costs in the region and the
nation’s highest property taxes. These costs drive well-paying blue-collar jobs
to states like Indiana and Missouri. Companies such as Hoist Liftruck
Manufacturing LLC continue to shift plants and jobs to other states, resulting
in fewer opportunities for middle-class residents of Illinois.
[to top of second column] |
The Chicago region has tremendous advantages in location, transportation
networks and college-educated talent that make it a natural hub for business
headquarters. But attracting headquarters is only a small slice of economic
development. Illinois needs to also attract middle-class jobs and allow small
businesses to flourish.
Instead of offering costly subsidies for companies to relocate their
headquarters to Chicago, such as those Illinois offered to ConAgra in 2015 and
those Illinois and Chicago offered to Boeing in 2001, Illinois and its
municipalities should focus on removing barriers to middle-class jobs. Those
barriers include high workers’ compensation costs, prevailing wage restrictions
and burdensome regulations. Improving the state’s business climate will help
Illinois to realize the potential offered by its resources, promoting economic
growth and opportunities for all Illinoisans.
Click here to respond to the editor about this article
|
