Chicago andits suburbs is home to 35Fortune 500 companies and is atransportation anddistribution center.Manufacturing,printing,publishing,insurance, transportation, financial trading and services, andfood processing also play major roles in the city's economy. The total economic output of Chicago ingross metropolitan product totaled US$770.7 billion in 2020,^[1][2] surpassing the total economic output ofSwitzerland and making Chicago's gross metropolitan product (GMP) the third largest in the United States. The city is home to severalFortune 500 companies, includingArcher Daniels Midland,Conagra Brands,Exelon,JLL,Kraft Heinz,McDonald's,Mondelez International,Motorola Solutions,Sears, andUnited Airlines Holdings,^[3] although Chicago has experienced an exodus of large corporations since 2020,^[4] includingBoeing;Citadel LLC;Caterpillar; andTyson Foods.^[5] Three Fortune 500 companies left Chicago in 2022, leaving the city with 35, still second to New York City.^[6]

The Lakeshore East development, and the 300 North Lasalle office building are projects completed after 2000. Since theGreat Recession, other projects, such as the planned 150-story 2000 footChicago Spire by architectSantiago Calatrava, have been canceled.^[7] Many city neighborhoods are gentrifying at a rapid pace as well, includingHumboldt Park,Logan Square,Pilsen,Lincoln Park,Bucktown,Wicker Park, andRogers Park^[8][9] The massive expansion ofO'Hare International Airport and recently reconstructed^[when?]Dan Ryan Expressway will shape development patterns for years to come.

Changes inhouse prices for theChicago metropolitan area are publicly tracked on a regular basis using theCase–Shiller index; the statistic is published byStandard & Poor's and is also a component of S&P's 10-citycomposite index of the value of the residential real estate market.

The city houses one of theFederal Reserve Banks, established in 1914. There is also theFederal Home Loan Bank of Chicago. The largest banks in the Chicago region (by % of deposits) are:JPMorgan Chase,Bank of America (through its acquisition ofLaSalle Bank),BMO Harris Bank (aBMO subsidiary), andNorthern Trust. The largest banks headquartered in Chicago are:BMO Harris Bank,Northern Trust,Wintrust Financial, andFirst Midwest Bank. Many financial institutions are in theLoop.

Chicago has five major financialexchanges, including theChicago Stock Exchange (CHX), theChicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), theChicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), theChicago Board of Trade (CBOT), andNYSE Arca. While the city of Chicago houses most of the major brokerage firms in the area, someinsurance companies are in the suburbs, such asAllstate Corporation.

In the 2020Global Financial Centres Index, Chicago was ranked as having the 20th most competitive financial center in the world and sixth-most competitive in the United States (afterNew York City,San Francisco,Los Angeles,Boston, andWashington, D.C.).^[11]

According to Reboot Illinois,^[12] the largest employers in the city of Chicago are:

Before it was incorporated as atown in 1833, the primaryindustry wasfur trading. In the 1790s,Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable, the area's first resident andHaitian-born fur trader, established a furtrading post in the area, which later became known asFort Dearborn, along the bank of theChicago River, where he traded until relocating again in 1800.^[13]

TheAmerican Fur Company, established in 1808 byJohn Jacob Astor to compete with the powerfulCanadian North West andHudson Bay companies, practically took control of the fur trade in theUnited States following theWar of 1812. It quickly became known for its ruthless practice of buying out or destroying the competition, as most private traders inChicago soon found out. It appointedJohn Kinzie and AntoineDeschamps as its first agents innorthern Illinois, and they reported to the company's headquarters onMackinac Island. Their field of operations covered northeastern Illinois and theIllinois River. In 1819,Charles H. Beaubien was brought in to assistKinzie and eventually became head of the outfit.Gurdon S. Hubbard replaced Deschamps in 1823 but soon went on his own by purchasing all interests of the company inIllinois.

Late in the 19th century, Chicago was part of thebicycle craze, as home toWestern Wheel Company, which introducedstamping to the production process and significantly reduced costs,^[14] while early in the 20th century, the city was part of theautomobile revolution, hosting thebrass era car builderBugmobile, which was founded there in 1907.^[15]

It was also home toGrigsby-Grunow, which manufacturedradios under theMajestic brand until the company failed in 1934.^[16] (Majestic Radio and Television Corporation preserved the Majestic name, whileGeneral Household Utilities kept Grunow alive.)^[17] Chicago also hosted E. H. Scott'sScott Transformer Company, which introduced a high-grade radio in 1928, and grew intoScott Radio Laboratories;^[18] this was located at 4450 Ravenswood Avenue in 1946,^[18] and produced "very expensive, beautifully-designed, chrome-plated chassis".^[19] It added "a line of high-quality television sets in 1949".^[20] Other entrants in this business wereZenith, which started life there in 1918, entering auto radios in the 1930s,^[21] andGalvin Manufacturing Corporation, which started manufacturing power supplies in 1928 and went on to automobile radios under theMotorola marque in 1930,^[22] as well asWalkie-talkie andHandie-Talkie and for the Army.^[22]

During World War II, the steel mills in the city of Chicago alone accounted for 20% of all steel production in the United States and 10% of global production. The city produced more steel than the United Kingdom during the war, and surpassed Nazi Germany's output in 1943 (after barely missing in 1942). Some mills were located on the branches of the Chicago River emanating from the downtown area, but the largest mills were located along the Calumet River and Lake Calumet in the far south of the city. Over 200,000 people were employed in the steel industry at its peak in the 1950s and 1960s, but mass layoffs in the 1970s and 1980s devastated many working class south side neighborhoods that were heavily dependent on industrial jobs. Downsizing and plant closures continued into the 1990s and 2000s, and the US Dept of Commerce estimates that today fewer than 25,000 people are employed in the steel industry in the Chicago–Joliet–Naperville, IL–IN–WIMetropolitan Statistical Area (18,000 of whom are actually in Northwest Indiana.

In 1945,US Steel was Chicago's largest single employer, with 18,000 workers at the company's South Works.^[23]

Massive amounts of goods passed through Chicago from places in the Mississippi Valley such asSt. Louis, Missouri. Grain was stored in Chicago, and people began buying contracts on it. Later, people as far away asNew York City began buying contracts bytelegraph on the goods that would be stored in Chicago in the future. From this were established theChicago Board of Trade (CBOT) and theChicago Mercantile Exchange (CME).

Chicago has produced many of the foremost industrialists, corporate lawyers, merchants, and financiers in United States history. Among the foremost of the Chicago industrialists, lawyers, financiers, and merchants wereJohn Villiers Farwell,Edmund Dick Taylor,Potter Palmer,George Pullman,Charles Gray,Marshall Field,Richard Teller Crane,Martin Ryerson,John Jacob Glessner,Jacob Bunn,John Whitfield Bunn,John Graves Shedd,Cyrus Hall McCormick,Edward Avery Shedd,Charles Banks Shedd,Leander McCormick,Stanley Field,Charles Deering,James Deering,Robert Law,Francis Peabody,Leonard Richardson,Milo Barnum Richardson,Joseph Edward Otis,Frank Hatch Jones,Arthur Jerome Eddy,Arthur J. Caton,Nathaniel Kellogg Fairbank,Ezra Butler McCagg,Julius Rosenwald,Morris Selz,Harry Selz,William McCormick Blair,William Douglas Richardson,Charles Farwell,James Monroe Stryker andJon Stryker of the Bunn–Richardson–Stryker–Taylor family (See:John Whitfield Bunn and Jacob Bunn),Samuel Insull,Max Adler,Lucius Fisher,Lucius Teeter,John Peter Altgeld,Walter Gurnee,Philip Danforth Armour,Gustavus Franklin Swift, Michael Morris,Jacob Best,Jonathan Y. Scammon, and many others.

• Tourism in Chicago
• List of companies in the Chicago metropolitan area
• Economy of Illinois
• Great Lakes Megalopolis

• Economy of Chicago

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