Borrowing from an approach that sometimes appears in the finance sections of the popular press, LSGL analysis is a handy and versatile way to compare, portray and classify the patterns of real retail trade earnings growth across all of Illinois' 102 counties. In finance, this technique is used for comparing and assessing the market performance of individual securities or across industry sectors. For example, the performance of the 30 stocks contained within Dow are compared with one another over the past week in contrast to their performance over the past month using the Dow's respective averages as the points of reference.

Here in this Illinois Regional Economic Analysis Project report, we adopt this approach to gauge and compare the real retail trade earnings growth of Illinois' 102 counties over the latest available year (2022) against the backdrop of their growth over the long term period (2010-2022). In so doing we classify their growth and performance into 4 broad categories: Leading, Slipping, Gaining and Lagging.

This figure displays the 102 counties of Illinois as dots on a scattergram, with the vertical axis representing the average annual real retail trade earnings growth rate over the long-term period (2010-2022), and the horizontal axis representing the real retail trade earnings growth rate for the near-term (2022).

This figure sets apart those counties whose long-term real retail trade earnings growth exceeded the statewide average of 3.12%, by portraying them in the top two quadrants demarcated at 3.12% on the vertical axis. County whose long-term average annual real retail trade earnings growth rate trailed the statewide average (3.12%) are distributed in the bottom two quadrants. In all, 0 counties surpassed the statewide average over 2010-2022, while 0 counties fell below.

Similarly, the two quadrants on the right of this figure present the positions of the 0 counties whose most recent (2022) real retail trade earnings growth rate exceeded the statewide average (4.11%). The two quadrants on the left feature those 0 counties whose real retail trade earnings growth over 2022 trailed the statewide average.

Accordingly, each quadrant portrays the performance of all 102 counties corresponding with their long-term (2010-2022) and near-term (2022) performance relative to their respective statewide averages of 3.12% over 2010-2022 and 4.11% over 2022:

Leading counties () (top-right quadrant)...are counties whose average annual real retail trade earnings growth rate surpassed the statewide average both long-term (3.12%) and near-term (4.11%).

Slipping counties () (top-left quadrant)...are counties whose long-term average annual real retail trade earnings growth rate exceeded the statewide average (3.12%), but whose near-term growth has "slipped" by falling below the Illinois average (4.11%).

Gaining counties () (bottom-right quadrant)...are counties whose long-term average annual real retail trade earnings growth rate fell below the statewide average (3.12%), but whose near-term growth has "gained" by registering above the average (4.11%) statewide.

Lagging counties () (bottom-left quadrant)...are counties whose average annual real retail trade earnings growth rate fell under the statewide average both long-term (3.12%) and near-term (4.11%).