Prairie State Wire

A recent report stated that the average taxpayer's household is obligated for $110,000 for Illinois' half-a-trillion public employee pension debt. 

Wirepoints reported that the total sum of the state and local public retiree obligations have an unfunded liability of $530 billion.

The state's retirement debts increased to $530 billion in 2020, according to a Wirepoints analysis of Moody’s Investors Service debt estimates.

The state's retirement debts increased to $530 billion in 2020. | Adobe Stock

This marks the first year that the credit rating agency’s estimates of Illinois’ retirement debts have surpassed the $500 billion threshold, which consists of both pension and retiree health insurance shortfalls at the state and municipal level.

"The jump in Illinois’ shortfall, up nearly $100 billion compared to 2019, was due largely to the drop in interest rates as a result of the COVID crisis,” the report stated. “Illinois’6 shortfall is expected to remain elevated in 2021 despite the market recovery.”

The report found that Chicago, along with Cook County's pensions and retiree health, were short $122 billion while the state pension obligation bonds totaled $9 billion.

"The growth in Illinois’ retirement debts to half-a-trillion dollars is yet another grim reminder of how lawmakers' refusal to address the pension crisis does real harm to ordinary residents. These outsized debts have contributed directly to Illinois’ other crises, including the state’s worst-in-the-nation credit rating, the 2nd-highest property taxes and the nation’s 5th-worst decline in home values. The pension crisis has also contributed indirectly to a record rate of out-migration and the nation's 2nd-largest population losses since 2010,” the report stated.

Mounting debts signify just how compromised retirement security of more than a million Illinois government workers and retirees has fallen.

Illinois’ state-level pensions are just 39% funded, the lowest ratio in the nation, according to Pew Charitable Trusts.