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Personal Finance Reports

A Breakdown of Chicago’s Finances

Updated Apr 05, 2023   |   4-min read

Home to nearly three million people, Chicago, Illinois is the third most populous city in the United States. Aside from being a major U.S. city, Chicago has dominated the Midwest region as a major economic center with its access to the Great Lakes and Mississippi River system.

Although recognized as a major economic center, Chicago is one of the largest cities to have experienced a decline in population over the last year. The unemployment rate is above average at 6 percent for the city and year-over-year percent change in employment has been more volatile compared to the rest of the country, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Despite some of these stats, Chicago’s employees are paid slightly more than the average U.S. employee across all occupations. And, wage increases are moving at a slightly higher rate as compared to the national average.

This is just a small snap shot of Chicago’s financial health, but at LendEDU, we wanted to dig a little bit deeper into the finances of the third largest American city. With that said, we relied on licensed data from Experian’s Premier Aggregated Statistics and Onboard Informatics’ city data to provide some additional insight on the city’s finances. Read on to see how the neighborhoods of Chicago stack up against each other.

Quick Table Note: If you want to see the opposite end of any list, click the right-most column.

On this page:

Map of Chicago’s Overall Finances

Highest Credit Scores

Highest Household Income

Highest Credit Card Debt Balances

Lowest Credit Card Delinquency Rates

The delinquency rate in this section refers to the portion of consumers with at least one credit card who were reported to have missed a payment for at least 30 days or more within the last six months.

Highest Outstanding Mortgage Balances

Lowest Mortgage Delinquency Rates

The delinquency rate in this section refers to the portion of consumers with at least one outstanding mortgage who were reported to have missed a payment for at least 30 days or more within the last six months.

Highest Levels of Student Loan Debt

Highest Auto Loan Debt Levels

Methodology

All data for this report was mostly pulled from Experian’s Premier Aggregated Credit Statistics (PACS) and Onboard Informatics city-level dataset. Supplemental data was taken from two real estate websites, chicagorealestatelocal.com and seechicagorealestate.com.

From PACS, ZIP Code™1 data, average VantageScore®2 3.0, average credit card debt, percentage of consumers 30 or more days late on a credit card payment, average mortgage balance, percentage of consumers 30 or more days late on a mortgage payment, average student loan debt, and average auto loan debt were used.

From Onboard Informatics, median household income and location data (city name, state name, and ZIP Code™) were pulled. The ZIP™ codes from Onboard and Experian were used to join corresponding Experian financial data with Onboard location and financial data. Neighborhood names were found by cross referencing the two different real estate websites mentioned earlier. A total of 57 neighborhoods were identified using the ZIP™ codes from Onboard and Experian after cross referencing with the real estate websites. 

Afterwards, several tables were made with each focusing on at least one piece of financial data. All listed neighborhoods were included in each table and ranked either from highest to lowest or vice versa. Average VantageScore® 3.0 and median household income were ranked highest to lowest. Average credit card debt, Average mortgage debt, average auto loan debt, and average student loan debt were ranked lowest to highest. Percentage of consumers 30 or more days late on a credit payment or mortgage payment statistics were ranked lowest to highest.

See more of LendEDU’s Research

1. Experian is a nonexclusive full-service provider licensee of the United States Postal Service. The following trademarks are owned by the United States Postal Service: ZIP and ZIP Code. The price for Experian’s services is not established, controlled or approved by the United States Postal Service.

2. VantageScore is a registered trademark of VantageScore Solutions, LLC.