Chicago and its suburbs, which together comprise the Chicago Metropolitan Area, is home to 35 Fortune 500 companies and is a transportation and distribution center. Manufacturing, printing, publishing, insurance, transportation, financial trading and services, and food processing also play major roles in the city's economy. The total economic output of Chicago in gross metropolitan product totaled US$770.7 billion in 2020, surpassing the total economic output of Switzerland and making Chicago's gross metropolitan product (GMP) the third largest in the United States, after New York and Los Angeles. The city is home to several Fortune 500 companies, including Archer Daniels Midland, Conagra Brands, Exelon, JLL, Kraft Heinz, McDonald's, Mondelez International, Motorola Solutions, Sears, and United Airlines Holdings, although Chicago has experienced an exodus of large corporations since 2020, including Boeing; Citadel LLC; Caterpillar; and Tyson Foods. Three Fortune 500 companies left Chicago in 2022, leaving the city with 35, still second to New York City.
Real estate and corporate location
The 92-story Trump Tower Chicago, Lakeshore East development, and the 300 North Lasalle office building are projects completed after 2000. Since the Great Recession, other projects, like the planned 150-story 2000 foot Chicago Spire by architect Santiago Calatrava, have now been cancelled. Many city neighborhoods are gentrifying at a rapid pace as well, including Humboldt Park, Logan Square, Pilsen, Uptown, Near Southside, and Rogers Park. The massive expansion of O'Hare International Airport and recently reconstructed Dan Ryan Expressway will shape development patterns for years to come.
Changes in house prices for the Chicago metropolitan area are publicly tracked on a regular basis using the Case–Shiller index; the statistic is published by Standard & Poor's and is also a component of S&P's 10-city composite index of the value of the residential real estate market.
Finance
The city houses one of the Federal Reserve Banks, established in 1914. There is also the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago. The largest banks in the Chicago region (by % of deposits) are: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America (through its acquisition of LaSalle Bank), BMO Harris Bank (a BMO subsidiary), and Northern Trust. The largest banks headquartered in Chicago are: BMO Harris Bank, Northern Trust, Wintrust Financial, and First Midwest Bank. Many financial institutions are in the Loop.
Chicago has five major financial exchanges, including the Chicago Stock Exchange (CHX), the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), and NYSE Arca. While the city of Chicago houses most of the major brokerage firms in the area, some insurance companies are in the suburbs, such as Allstate Corporation.
In the 2020 Global Financial Centres Index, Chicago was ranked as having the 20th most competitive financial center in the world and sixth-most competitive in the United States (after New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, and Washington, D.C.).
Largest employers
According to Reboot Illinois, the largest employers in the city of Chicago are:
Historic highlights
Before it was incorporated as a town in 1833, the primary industry was fur trading. In the 1790s, Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable, the area's first resident and Haitian-born fur trader, established a fur trading post in the area, which later became known as Fort Dearborn, along the bank of the Chicago River, where he traded until relocating again in 1800.
The American Fur Company, established in 1808 by John Jacob Astor to compete with the powerful Canadian North West and Hudson Bay companies, practically took control of the fur trade in the United States following the War of 1812. It quickly became known for its ruthless practice of buying out or destroying the competition, as most private traders in Chicago soon found out. It appointed John Kinzie and Antoine Deschamps as its first agents in northern Illinois, and they reported to the company's headquarters on Mackinac Island. Their field of operations covered northeastern Illinois and the Illinois River. In 1819, Charles H. Beaubien was brought in to assist Kinzie and eventually became head of the outfit. Gurdon S. Hubbard replaced Deschamps in 1823 but soon went on his own by purchasing all interests of the company in Illinois.