Demographic & Economic Data

The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) collects demographic and economic data to better understand northeastern Illinois’ 8.6 million residents, all of whom have different lives, needs, and goals. This data helps create tools to help CMAP and its partners make more equitable and informed decisions. You can download CMAP’s demographic and economic data on the Data Hub.

Community cohorts

The Community Cohorts Evaluation Tool is a robust, data-driven evaluation that helps fulfill our commitment to making project selections and funding decisions more equitable. The tool assigns the region’s 284 municipalities and Chicago’s 77 neighborhoods into groups based on population, income, tax base per capita, and percent of population located in an economically disconnected or disinvested area.

Community Cohorts Evaluation Tool

Job quality and access

The Job Quality and Access Tool provides analysis on employment trends, industry clusters, and the quality and accessibility of jobs (such as the level of education required). Communities can use this tool to understand the advantages of their local labor market, identify areas that need assistance, and develop action plans to strengthen industries that support shared prosperity.

Job Quality and Access Tool

Economically disconnected and disinvested areas

To help advance ON TO 2050’s commitment to inclusive growth, CMAP identified locations not currently well connected to regional economic progress — economically disconnected and disinvested areas. For a stronger, more equitable future, our region needs to ensure that every resident and community can fully contribute to and benefit from the economy.

ON TO 2050 local strategy map

Socioeconomic forecasts

Socioeconomic forecasts are required for a metropolitan planning organization’s long-range transportation plan, with a horizon year at least 20 years out from the plan’s adoption date. The results serve dual purposes: they provide an understanding of forecasted population and employment trends to help shape plan recommendations, and they inform CMAP travel models for air quality conformity analyses, as well as small-area traffic projections.

While the forecasts are driven by transportation planning needs, these projections are also used by CMAP staff, partner agencies, local communities, economic development organizations, and watershed planners. CMAP is committed to providing results with more demographic and temporal details.

Socioeconomic forecast