Chicago has long marketed itself as a world-class city with global ambition.

It was the City That Works.

But Chicago no longer works, according to a number of indicators, and the citizens are getting restless.

Beneath the beautiful skyline and civic boosterism, the financial strain on ordinary residents is becoming harder to ignore.

In a recent interview, Wallet Hub financial analyst Chip Lupo detailed new findings that place Chicago in an unenviable position: the city now ranks No. 1 among the 100 most populous U.S. cities for residents in financial distress.

“We defined financial distress as having any type of credit account in forbearance or deferred payments,” Lupo told The Lion, “which, of course, means that, as the account holder, you have a sort of temporary relief from making any payments due to financial hardship right now.”

Lupo said Chicago was not even in the top five a year earlier.

But it “skyrocketed upward,” with a 30% jump in residents with credit accounts in distress between the third quarter of 2024 and the third quarter of 2025.

“This isn’t the AP top 25,” he added. “This is not a list in which you want to be number one for sure.”

In plain English: more Chicagoans are asking lenders for relief because they can’t keep up.

The surge is unfolding as homeowners brace for the largest property tax hike in at least 30 years, reported Chicago’s local ABC7 News.

Minority communities are being hit hardest, said the news station.

Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas blamed high downtown vacancy rates for a plunge in property tax revenue that has to be made up somehow.

“It went down in a landslide, and it is coming back like a snail – slowly, very slowly and not fast enough to handle the residents who carry the burden,” Pappas told ABC7.

Taxes are not an abstract concern, either.

A survey by the Illinois Policy Institute found Illinois and Chicago voters rank high taxes as their No. 1 issue.

In a city where taxes seem to rise year after year, voters are increasingly vocal about the burden.

Meanwhile, inflation in Chicago has been running hotter than the national average.

The Chicago Federal Reserve’s most recent Chicago Fed Letter notes that price pressures in the region have outpaced the nation in key categories.

“Recent annual inflation readings show that inflation in Chicago has been higher than overall U.S. inflation and among the highest of the urban places for which the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports CPI data,” said the letter.

Spiking housing prices and transportation costs, excluding fuel prices, are the culprit the report said.

Grocery prices in Chicago have also continued climbing locally even as national inflation has cooled, according to a Chicago Sun-Times survey completed this month.

“Everything is expensive – the milk, the eggs, the cereal,” Chicago resident Lena Howard, 30, the mother of two young boys, told the Sun-Times. “For a box of cereal, they want damn near $10.”

Lupo emphasized that while national inflation has eased from its 9% peak and wages have begun to inch higher, many households are still digging out from pandemic-era debt.

Americans leaned heavily on credit cards when wages failed to keep pace with rising prices. In Chicago, that hangover appears especially acute.

Chicago also faces employment pressures.

“The other thing that I’m noticing: people tend not to pay that much attention to what we call underemployment” in Chicago, which is a general urban problem, said Lupo.

That means that in a city where minimum wage mandates are among the highest in the region, businesses face higher labor costs, while workers still struggle to make ends meet.

The Illinois Economic Policy Institute’s minimum wage data show continued upward pressure on pay.

Yet higher mandated minimum wages do not automatically translate into greater financial security if hours are cut, or opportunities shrink – conditions that create the classic case of underemployment.

In fact, higher minimum wages often help accelerate inflation.

Adding to the strain are mortgage rates hovering around 6%, which Lupo described as a drag on household balance sheets and housing market mobility.

While he sees those rates eventually coming down, “It’s not going to happen overnight.”

So even as gasoline prices have come down and some grocery categories are stabilizing nationally, Chicago’s inflation problems remain due to high housing costs and high transportation.

Illinois just had to rescue Chicago’s public transportation system with another tax increase, while a fare increase is still threatened.

The broader political and economic consequences are visible in migration patterns.

Americans are continuing to flee blue states as the nation’s political and economic center of gravity shifts south, toward lower taxes, cheaper housing and friendlier business climates, reported The Lion.

Lupo noted that statewide data on credit delinquency does not mirror the city’s sharp rise.

Still, about 50% of the state’s residents want to move out of state, according to surveys.

The number raises uncomfortable questions about local governance, spending priorities and economic competitiveness in the city and the state.

For decades, Chicago’s political leadership has leaned on higher taxes and aggressive spending to solve political problems.

But as more residents defer payments, seek forbearance and contemplate leaving, the model appears increasingly strained, with consumers just making minimum payments on debt.

“When you make the minimum payment, you’re only barely covering the cost of the interest,” said Lupo.

And barely covering costs is not working for Chicago residents anymore.