CUED

Background Research for the Chicago Jobs and Living Wage Campaign

The Chicago Jobs and Living Wage Ordinance has a simple mandate: with certain exceptions, businesses in Chicago which receive more than $50,000 in aid from the City of Chicago or a contract with the city for more than $5,000 must pay its employees at least $7.57 per hour. This living wage rate would allow a family of four to meet the federal poverty line of about $15,000 per year. While 36 of the 50 aldermen have said they will vote to pass the Chicago Jobs and Living Wage Ordinance, the Daley administration questions the budget implications of such an ordinance and its impact on job creation and retention.

The primary purpose of this report is to document job creation and retention results subsidized by public funds administered by the City of Chicago. The University of Illinois Center for Urban Economic Development (CUED) was retained by the Chicago Jobs and Living Wage Campaign to identify and follow-up job claims, where possible, made by the City of Chicago related to specific subsidy programs. The subsidy programs studied are as follows: Mayor's Office of Employment and Training On-the-Job Training (MET-OJT) , State of Illinois Enterprise Zones, Tax Increment Financing (TIFs), Industrial Revenue Bonds, Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Loans, County Tax Abatements, and Airport Revenue Bonds. Specifically, CUED studied initial claims made by the City of Chicago in terms of the number of jobs to be created and their wage levels. CUED also wanted to see if and how the City monitors jobs created through the above programs. The second objective of this study was to document how many jobs were actually created and their wage levels.

The first task of documenting initial claims was done by collecting press releases, reports, and public hearing papers when and if such documents exist. The second part of documenting actual job creation/retention was done through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) letters which requested specific documents from various city, county, and state agencies and departments. Such documents include blank applications for each program, completed applications for each program, blank monitoring forms, completed monitoring forms, completed contracts, and documents which disclose wage levels.

This website is maintained by Cedric Williams, Manager System Services,
UIC-Center for Urban Economic Development