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Originally Posted by IrishIllini
Interesting that PA got over 13M despite a smaller economy than IL. Can't credit that to weather, real estate, or business climate. Maybe IL is more reliant on immigration?
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Illinois has only Chicago.
A lot of people in SE PA and the Lehigh Valley work out of state...the area is so connected.
Lots of cross state commuters between PA and NJ, PA and DE, PA and MD, and even PA and NY.
Bucks County is a bedroom community for the RT 1 corridor in NJ (Princeton area). Lots of people in Delaware and Chester Counties in PA commute to banking and pharma jobs in Delaware. Increasingly, people in York County are commuting to Baltimore and the DC Metroplex. And in the Lehigh Valley (Allentown and Bethlehem) you have thousands of people commuting to North Jersey and NYC. NJ Transit is contemplating extending one of its commuter lines into the Lehigh Valley.
But the Lehigh Valley (Lehigh, Northampton, Monroe Counties) as well as South Central PA (Lancaster, York, Lebanon, Dauphin, Cumberland Counties) have very strong economies in their own right. PA only grew 2.4%, but I guarantee you that if you cleaved the state in 2, roughly along the I80 corridor, south and east of I80 probably grew between 5 and 10% and north and west of the I80 corridor probably shrunk 5%.
Its the tale of two states for sure.