Average Debt Burden (from state pension shortfall) Now $110,000 Per Household Illinois just reached an alarming milestone: each Illinois household is now on the hook for, on average, $110,000 in government-worker retirement debts. That figure is the result of dividing Illinois’ $530 billion in state and local retirement shortfalls among the state’s 4.9 million households. In 2019, the burden was $90,000 per household.
Illinois’ retirement debts increased to $530 billion in 2020, according to a Wirepoints analysis of Moody’s Investors Service debt estimates. This is the first year the credit rating agency’s estimates of Illinois’ retirement debts, made up of both pension and retiree health shortfalls at the state and local level, have broken $500 billion.