The real Decatur
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5/16/2009
The previous commentaries about Decatur, IL are so exaggerated that they even make me wonder if they were actually written by an agency. Before my review, Sperling’s city review was the only good information about Decatur in this page, and it well shows how much population (hemorrhaging actually) Decatur is losing, which means less taxes for the government and less sales for business. One of the reviewers, Kendra, should even be sued if a young couple makes the wrong decision of coming here, but hey, this town is good for retired couples. There’s no need to distort reality to speak well of Decatur.
First, the Decatur’s job market has consistently been one of the worst in an already unemployed state, Illinois. It is NOT “kind of high”. It’s stratospheric! There’s only jobs here for nurses, and gee! employers here have gone insane about nurses. You should even avoid driving through here if you happen to be a nurse or you may get smuggled by the hospitals!
It is not true that unemployment is bad only for those without any kind of degree. I have two college degrees in engineering and previous experience, yet I have been unemployed for a year and it before that, it wasn‘t much better. The local college graduates always leave town as soon as they’re done. And there’s only one university, a private, expensive and not too prestigious one. Other than that, a community college.
The big problem here is that there’s only a tiny bunch of employers other than hospitals and it’s a plain lie that many factories are always hiring. The exception is ADM and they do it to such an extend that it doesn’t look right.
Look, when nobody else in town is hiring much (not even the other big company, Tate&Lyle) and ADM posts jobs like crazy (see it for yourself in their career web site), you have to assume that ADM is following the new tendencies recommended by HR advisers: hire slowly and fire quickly. At least I know as a fact they are slow to hire, they can take like 4 months just to give you a phone interview. Not even the hospitals are hiring this much. They just show their ads on and on because of the local lack of nurses, but the kids are catching up and this job source will soon be gone. The fact that there are a few big companies really doesn’t help the job market much in either real job openings or salaries.
One of my former colleges got both a BS (from private college) and a MS in chemistry, it got like 3 years of chemical experience in one of the local big companies (T&L), yet its next chemical job paid like 40K. Another folk with 20 or more years of chemical experience (many of them in an international corporation) ended up as the its boss’ office boy. I chose to us “it” and “its” to cover them as much as possible because of this embarrassing situation. Well, I myself were making 30K.
Regarding activities, the real fun in this whole region is in Champaign, thus, it’s not much advantage to live in the center. The real advantages of this town is the peaceful traffic and general life. Crime is said to be quite high in downtown, but I’ve never seen anything. I have only seen peace here. Downtown is becoming a ghost town and looks quite impressive. You don’t need to go to Rome, Greece or Egypt to watch ruins, you got them here! The History Channel should make a documentary from here one of these days; they love so much catastrophes, even the ones that’ll happen after we would disappear. Well, downtown is only a small part of Decatur, and an abandoned house gets torn down when it gets abandoned elsewhere, thus keeping nice communities as nice and safe.
The air is usually clean (sometimes it stinks but no big deal and goes away soon), streets are also clean, there’s plenty of trees and neat gardens in cheap but pretty houses. Prices in general are not high. My apartment is 700 s.ft, w/cable, it’s pretty, located in a pretty area, there’s community pool and charges $445dls/month. The landlord is not too helpful sometimes.
Decatur,IL looks like a place for retirement, and you‘d surely meet many elderly here, people who only watch Fox news, church goers, etc. As soon as you get a few miles from here, people are quite rural without the charm of dressing like them. You even hear cases of guys with 8 children!
Winters get nasty, at times in -30 F and the summer days get very muggy sometimes, but I think most of the year is quite enjoyable. This year, 2009, winter went away soon and March was quite sunny.
If you’re not retired, chances are you’re only coming here because a local company hired you. You shouldn’t look forward to settle down here in any way. I am staying here only a few more day to finish my apartment contract. After that, I’m leaving.
Joe | Decatur, IL