Jefferson County, Illinois

• Income gap: Households earn meaningfully less than the national median, which directly affects retail demand, housing absorption, and tax base.
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 17.5 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest sector: Manufacturing employs 4,446 workers (28.6% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $76,359.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $2.4B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $91,582 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $25,994, a 3.5x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Oil and Gas Extraction concentrates at 2.47x the national norm.
• Cluster depth: 7 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, suggesting an interconnected industrial base rather than reliance on a single employer or sector.
• Attraction whitespace: 6 sub-sectors register LQ < 0.5, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 2.0x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 71.7% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 10.9% vacancy rate. In resort, rural, and seasonal markets much of this is recreational/seasonal (second homes), not available supply; confirm the vacancy-by-reason split before treating it as a redevelopment opportunity.
• Broadly affordable rents: All 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom tiers sit below the 30%-of-median-income affordability threshold (~$1,578/mo), a clear cost-of-living advantage for workforce attraction.

• Succession risk is real: 23.3% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Short commutes: 19.6-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 6 regional institutions feed the workforce; the top three combined produce 37,237 annual credentials.

Jefferson County shows emerging potential for oil and gas extraction attraction, with a 2.47x concentration and 36 jobs in this sub-sector. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 23.3% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

The interconnected base across oil and gas extraction, gasoline stations and fuel dealers, and hospitals creates supply-chain attraction leverage rather than single-employer risk, a structural advantage for industrial recruitment.