By: Mark Glennon*

It’s March, which means we are being subjected the dumbest annual study going about how well Chicago is doing.

It’s Site Selection Magazine’s yearly ranking of Chicagoland as its top metro in America for — the 13th consecutive year in a row that the magazine has coronated Chicago as No. 1. Local and national media trumpeted the headline. Illinois politicians like Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson celebrated as if they just cut the ribbon for a luxury stadium for the Bears in Chicago.

There’s just one problem. The study is junk. Worse than worthless.

Here’s why:

Site Selection Magazine bases its ranking on just one number – the raw total of new projects in a metro above any of three thresholds, namely $1 million in investment, or 20 new jobs or 20,000 feet of renovated space.

That’s it. One number.

Astonishingly, that means there’s no accounting for businesses that fled. We’re supposed to pretend that all the departures over the last 13 years from Chicago don’t matter, like Ken Griffin’s Citadel, Boeing, Caterpillar,  Tyson Foods, Freight company TTX, Guggenheim Partners, PEAK6 and many others.

Just as foolishly,  projects on the list are treated as if they are equal. There’s no distinction between, say, a Fortune 100 headquarters and a warehouse. A 20 person call center counts for as much as a $2 billion auto factory in South Carolina. A hog processor with 20,000 square feet counts as much as the SpaceX headquarters in Texas.

And why are part of Indiana’s new projects included? The Site Selection article based its number on the Chicago area Core-Based Statistical Area (CBSA), which the magazine correctly labeled as including part of Indiana. The Chicago CBSA does ,in fact, include Jasper, Lake, Newton and Porter Counties in Indiana. Relocations to there obviously should not be counted as victories for Chicago.

Mayor Brandon Johnson declared the ranking “one of the country’s clearest measures of economic and business expansion,” adding that Chicago serves as “the backbone of American commerce.” He listed Universal Horror Unleashed and a David Byrne collaboration with the Goodman Theatre as proof that Chicago’s “historic strengths continue to power new industries.” A haunted house and a Broadway director.

Governor Pritzker’s press release says Illinois “solidified its position as an economic powerhouse, crediting “innovative workforce development efforts, competitive incentives, and unmatched infrastructure.” Lieutenant Governor and U.S. Senate candidate Juliana Stratton said “These rankings are a reflection of the innovative and accommodating business environment we’ve built here in Illinois.”

That’s the real problem with Site Selection’s ranking that makes it worse than worthless: It gives cover to Illinois politicians to do what they do best — deny the catastrophe Chicago faces while refusing to act. I won’t try to summarize those problems, which are documented in thousands of pages of research by Wirepoints and others that we’ve published here.

I will, however, leave you with one recent graphic we haven’t yet published about corporate moves that gets closer to the truth, which is from the Visual Capitalist summarizing data from CBRE Group.

*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.