Why do you care about employment? Are you planning on working in Illinois after college? If you are concerned, you can always just leave IL after you finish.
Don’t use the state’s income as a proxy for crime rates. If you are interested in actual crime rates, just look up actual crime rate data.
If you’re talking about the Mercatus Center research, there’s also nothing in that research report that links budget solvency to any other outcomes for people who live in the state, let alone people who are just studying there. Some of the Southern states that are technically doing well are some of the poorest states in the nation, with the highest rates of poverty and inequality and unemployment. Alaska, which is in the top 20 states by financial solvency, actually had the highest unemployment rate in 2016. Vermont, which is in the bottom 10, actually had an unemployment rate significantly lower than the country’s average.
Alabama is in the top 15 states by financial solvency but is in the bottom 5 states by poverty level, with 17% of its population living below the poverty line. Maryland, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Jersey are some of the most financially insolvent states (NJ is actually dead last) but have some of the lowest poverty levels in the U.S.
I really don’t think this is anything you need to worry about.
But, in the interest of developing a more well-rounded list:
A user experience major is going to make this list too narrow, because very few schools offer this major or anything like it. I work in UX; you don’t need a UX degree to work in UX. Understanding users is really more a combination of social science principles and understanding interactive media - so any place you can study one or both will work out.
Michigan State has an experience architecture major that’s pretty similar. Carnegie Mellon has a human-computer interaction second major, and University of Washington has a major in human-centered design and engineering. Georgia Tech’s computer science major has a “people” concentration that’s like an HCI focus, and they also have a computational media major. Stanford’s major in CS has an HCI specialization; the major in symbolic systems also has an HCI concentration. USC has an interactive media major, and they have a games user research minor as well.
Other majors that may appeal to you are interactive media-type majors (they go by many names) and cognitive science.
If you live in Iowa, the University of Iowa’s majors in informatics and communications may be interesting to you (one of the former researchers on my team - who left and now works for another major company - has a BS in informatics). Journalism and mass communication could work because of Iowa’s emphasis on media studies in their journalism major, and the fact that you have to pair it with another major.
At Drake University, you could major in data analytics or in rhetoric, media, and social change.
Of course this is all in addition to traditional majors you can use to enter UX (computer science, software engineering, computer engineering, electrical engineering, or psychology or sociology).