08/27/2026
👇👇👇
More than 2,500 jobs. Gone in a day.
Tyson closed its Joslin beef plant on August 13. Workers found out when they showed up for their shift. The work moves to Nebraska, Kansas, and Texas.
I’ve had that happen. Showed up, plant was closed, whole warehouse displaced. I picked up my check and went home.
Tyson says it’s cattle supply. Record-low herd numbers, an industry-wide capacity correction. The Governor says it’s tariffs and the war in Iran.
Both of them decided what caused this before anyone measured it.
That’s the pattern. Something closes, everyone reaches for the explanation they already had, and nobody checks.
Illinois has a law that’s supposed to prevent exactly that. DCEO is required to survey businesses that leave and report why. Every year. Year after year, that report comes back and says the sample was too small to draw conclusions from. One year the response rate was about fifteen percent. Another year the department wrote that the results provide limited information.
The state is legally required to find out why businesses leave Illinois. The state has told the General Assembly, in writing, that it doesn’t know.
Boeing. Caterpillar. Citadel. Now Tyson. Maybe those are four different stories. Maybe some of them have nothing to do with Springfield at all. That’s the point. We don’t know, because we never built anything that could tell us.
So next year there will be another plant, another statement, another round of people blaming whoever they were already blaming.
And I’ll make a prediction now: next year’s report will probably say the same thing. Not enough responses. Not enough information. No clear answer.
You can’t fix what you refuse to learn.
