

The best source for official data about Chicago from the 2010 census is, of course, the official census website. Looking back into historical data also shows some interesting trends – non-Hispanic whites made up 59% of the residents of Chicago in 1970, falling to just 31.7% in 2010 – which indicates that many of the people leaving the city over the past few decades for the suburbs have been from among its relatively more affluent white population. The city's white population is found primarily in the Northern part of the city, and its black community in the Southern part of the city (as can be seen from this map, in which red dots represent Whites, blue dots represent Blacks and orange dots represent Hispanics.) The geographical distribution of race in Chicago is mostly a result of Chicago's historically racist housing allocation policy, which forced its black population into the cheaper Chicago South Side. Like Chicago itself, the northern suburbs are relatively more affluent than its southern suburbs. Like the city of Chicago, the CJN Metro Area is also the third largest in the US, behind New York-Northern New Jersey- Long Island (20.18 million) and the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana (13.34 million) metro areas.Īs the population of Chicago itself has gradually fallen, the population of its wider metro area has grown, representing both natural growth in those areas and a gradual move of the city's workforce into its suburbs. In 2016, this number is estimated to be around 9,554,598.

According to data from the 2010 census, the CJN Metro Area is home to an impressive 9,504,753 people. Today, Chicago the city makes up only just over a quarter of the wider Chicago-Joliet-Naperville Metropolitan Area's population. Population of the Chicago Metropolitan Area Chicago is by far the largest city in Illinois, with the next largest city, Aurora, being under 200,000 people. The 2016 estimated population of 2.7 million makes Chicago the third largest city in the United States, behind New York City (8.55 million) and Los Angeles (3.97 million). The 2010 census showed a dramatic drop of almost 7% over the previous ten years, so if the Census Bureau's 2011 figures are correct, they would appear to show Chicago tentatively entering a new period of growth. This estimate is based on extrapolating the 2010 census data, which reported that the city was home to 2,695,598 people.


The population has been estimated to be approximately 2,679,080, with slow growth and declines attributed to violence, tax increases and issues with schools. They confirmed that, in July 2011, there were 2,707,120 people living in the city of Chicago. The latest estimate for the population of Chicago, Illinois comes from the US Census Bureau.
