In efforts to monitor economic development throughout the region, World Business Chicago collects and quantifies information from isolated project announcements and profiles reported by the media. Though not exhaustive or rigorously scientific, the result is a broad, data-driven snapshot of the year’s economic development news. A detailed report of the 2011 data will be released in the next few months, but following are overarching highlights from the findings.
The preliminary totals for 2011 show 310 major regional expansions. Of these, 89 were in the city of Chicago – at 28.7 percent of the total, this mirrors Chicago’s share of the regional population. However, industry breakdowns differed between the city and the region as a whole. Regionally, the largest proportions of expansions involved companies that were associated with manufacturing (26.5%), wholesale trade (14.6%), or retail trade (11.3%). In Chicago proper, the major industries were professional/scientific/technical services (22.7%), manufacturing (13.6%), and finance/insurance (11.4%).
The map below shows how the 310 projects were distributed across the region. The major office, manufacturing and logistics centers in the western suburbs showed the strongest concentration of expansions outside of Chicago.
WBC’s tracking system for major business expansions across the Chicago region was implemented in 2010. All projects in this database are public, and most information comes from media reports and press releases, though a small portion is sourced through company sources, partner agencies, proprietary databases, and internal WBC projects. The criteria for including expansions are any one of the following: 50+ additional (not intra-regionally relocated) jobs, $1 million+ investment, 20,000+ additional square feet, a headquarters facility, or WBC involvement.
WBC will release a detailed report of the 2011 data this quarter. The 2010 report, in which 232 major expansions were identified, can be found on the WBC website.
