Yes, very bad. Huge office vacancies in Schaumburg PRIOR to MAR 2020. Modern office buildings in Schaumburg were selling prior to MAR 2020 for the price of the parking lot. Hoffman Estates had huge amount of new/ modern tech research park complexes built. I believe these modern buildings are over 50 percent vacant. Many of them the landlord/ owners have given up and won't even continue landscape/ lawn maintenance. Motorola, Allstate, ATT (Ameritech), and many others have exited the majority of their operations from the NW burbs. I could go on and on. I read an article that stated every man, woman, and child owes the state of Illinois $100k each for unfunded pension liabilities. So a family of two adults and three children that are residents of Illinois owe the state 500k. At number does not include the state debt and other massive financial liabilities.
Safeway had a large presence in Illinois. Safeway chose to walk away, not even try to sell their grocery business. Bank of America is shutting down all its retail branches in Illinois, same thing- not even trying to sell the deposits.
Only one thing positive for Illinois is that it has so much vacant warehouses- the "logistics economy" found a move in ready near term home. Those buildings have seen a great growth in occupancy. Of course, the logistics business ranks pretty low on a MACRO basis for salaries/ pay.
It is a shame. Illinois has great people, a ton of farmland producing corn and soybeans. Pretty decent transportation infrastructure. The residents of Illinois deserved much better than they have, much better.
Just one of thousands examples of what I consider "ethical" but league abuses in Illinois was that an employee of the Illinois Teachers Union, could work just ONE DAY as a substitute teacher in Illinois, and qualify for a State teachers Pension. What job can you work as a substitute for one day and earn a state pension? One final example is three park district employees were making 400k annually. When they were "caught", they all retired and now collect 300k annually in a state pension. Of course almost all of these people move to Arizona or Florida when they retire, often retiring well below 65 years of age. And the hard working people of Illinois have to pay these massive unexplainable pensions and entitlements. And Illinois is the only state in the Union with a loss of population every year for the past ten plus years, so the liability for each Illinois resident gets heavier and heavier. All while the states liabilities, debts, and deficits skyrocket.