Even on days when the temperature is above zero, Illinois struggles to keep people here. They’re leaving, in droves, for states with sunnier economic opportunities.

New census data and other figures reveal the cold hard truth: More people are moving away than coming, tipping Illinois last year into the dreadful category of states with declining populations. From July 2013 to July 2014, Illinois shrank by about 10,000 residents in all, joining other states in decline such as West Virginia, Connecticut and Alaska.

When demographer William Frey of the Brookings Institution analyzed the annual Census Bureau estimates, two facts jumped out at him. First, Florida overtook New York to become the third-most-populous state (after California and Texas). And second, Illinois is badly leaking people.

Even though the employment rate in the Chicago metropolitan area has fallen to 5.7 percent, it’s not all good news for job-seekers, according to new data released by WalletHub.

WalletHub puts the Chicago area among the worst for finding a new job, coming in the bottom quarter of the 150 largest metro areas in the nation. After being No. 41 in 2014, Chicago has dropped to No. 118 on the list.

To come up with the rankings, WalletHub used 16 different metrics, including employment growth, part-time vs. full-time jobs, starting salary, and number of employees living in poverty.

The U.S. private sector has added more than 2.5 million jobs last year, and some economists say that if the pace of hiring continues, the nation could return to full employment by this time next year.

The rosy view can be attributed to the latest employment figures reported by payroll processor Automatic Data Processing and analysis provider Moody’s Analytics. Their report shows private-sector payrolls in the U.S. jumped by 241,000 in December, surpassing the 235,000 increase projected by economists. The U.S. private sector has now added more than 200,000 jobs for four consecutive months.

“At the current pace of job growth, the economy will be back to full employment by this time next year,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. Full employment is when all, or nearly all, people who are willing and able to work are able to do so.

As Bruce Rauner is sworn in Monday as Illinois’ 42nd governor at the Prairie Capital Convention Center, a half-mile away, government lawyers will file papers asking the state Supreme Court to reinstate a law that would make massive changes to the public employee pensions system.

It’s a law that Rauner lobbied against, arguing it didn’t go far enough to resolve Illinois’ worst-in-the-nation unfunded pension liability. It’s also a law public employee unions fought in the legislature and in the courts, contending the Illinois Constitution expressly prohibits diminishing retirement benefits once they’ve been handed out.

Regardless of what the court decides, the pension issue will remain the most significant one confronting Rauner and the state government he takes over. The state public pension system is nearly $105 billion short. That debt has led to declining credit ratings and higher costs when the state borrows money.

A measure has been filed that would prompt a special election in 2016 for Illinois Comptroller. The vacancy created in the office following the death of Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka in December exposed what some say is a weak spot in Illinois Constitution, as Topinka was set to begin a new, four-year term. The legislation would put in place a new method that would limit the length of gubernatorial appointments to fill such openings.

When Topinka suddenly died last month, it didn’t just leave a vacancy in the Illinois comptroller’s office. It also set in motion an effort to change the law of succession for several statewide offices.

Legislators on Thursday are to meet for a special session. Gov. Pat Quinn called them back to Springfield to consider holding an election for comptroller two years early, in 2016. The rationale behind the idea is that voters should get to decide who should hold office at the next reasonable opportunity, rather than having someone who was appointed comptroller stay on for Topinka’s entire four-year term.

And now, with a new governor ready to take his oath, all eyes in Illinois turn to Springfield. That in itself is remarkable. One party has run state government for so long that many voters could spend less time brightly wondering “What next?” than nervously mumbling “How much?”

For all of us, then, a new day.

Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan and Democratic Senate President John Cullerton have a combined 80 years in the statehouse and enjoy impressive control of their chambers. But joining them Monday is a Republican governor, Bruce Rauner, whose tenure in public office spans … not one day. He evidently thinks he hasn’t missed a thing. And we’ll be stunned if he makes a life of this work.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is pushing his political fundraising advantage, collecting $760,800 in recent weeks from well-heeled donors, including Hollywood director Steven Spielberg, thanks in large part to the fact the state’s campaign finance limits no longer apply in the mayor’s race.

According to state campaign finance records, Chicago for Rahm Emanuel late last month got $25,000 from Spielberg, $50,000 from music executive and film producer David Geffen, $10,000 from film producer Jeffrey Katzenberg and $100,000 from Cheryl Saban, wife of the CEO of Fox Family Network. They were among a spate of contributions to Emanuel’s campaign war chest from the Chicago area and around the country in the final few days of 2014.

Emanuel has been able to collect almost all of the recent money because obscure frequent candidate William Kelly filed paperwork in October showing he gave his own campaign $100,000. Under state law, once a candidate in a local race contributes $100,000 to his or her campaign within one year of an election, the state contribution limits no longer apply. Those limits are $5,300 for an individual, $10,500 for corporations and $52,600 for political action committees.

School choice has been one of the great successes of the education-reform movement in recent years, and taxpayer-funded vouchers have been one of the movement’s primary tools. Vouchers enable students and their parents to use public funds to choose the school that is best for them, freeing them from the monopoly that neighborhood public schools have had for decades.

Milton Friedman, considered the father of the modern school-choice movement, first proposed the concept of school vouchers in 1955. By introducing consumer choice into education, he argued, vouchers can help create a competitive marketplace: “Vouchers are not an end in themselves,” Friedman wrote in 1995; “they are a means to make a transition from a government to a market system.”

Friedman was likely even more innovative than education-reform advocates realize, because he saw that a real education market would create its own path, pushed along by market forces. Noting in 2003 that “there’s no reason to expect that the future market will have the shape or form that our present market has,” Friedman wondered: “How do we know how education will develop? Why is it sensible for a child to get all his or her schooling in one brick building?” Instead, Friedman proposed granting students “partial vouchers”: “Why not let them spend part of a voucher for math in one place and English or science somewhere else?…Why can’t a student take some lessons at home, especially now, with the availability of the Internet?”