Chicago is one of the most significant metropolitan areas in the USA (top 3 in GDP size), which contrast with the other Midwest city that we analyze (Detroit). The first thing that we noticed is that Chicago is the second city with the lowest population growth between 2007 and 2016. Meanwhile, the manufacturing sector's employment decline immensely (17.5%) until 2010 and since then it has remained fairly stable. However, manufacturing’s payroll increased moderately since 2009, leading the payroll to be almost the same in 2016 from our starting (2007).
The tech-related sector also suffered until 2011; however, it has shown an increase of more than 10% of employment since then, while payroll has increased by around 25%. It is worth noting that both sectors recorded approximately the same increase in nominal wages during the same period.