Cass County, Illinois

• Income gap: Households earn meaningfully less than the national median, which directly affects retail demand, housing absorption, and tax base.
• Below the state median: Median household income runs $15,265 (18.3%) under the Illinois median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 14.9 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 450 workers (36.9% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $31,816. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 781 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $884M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Real Estate and Rental and Leasing averages $75,510 while Retail Trade averages $31,816, a 2.4x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Crop Production concentrates at 4.89x the national norm, strong concentration that anchors the local economy and supports supply-chain attraction strategy.
• Cluster depth: 6 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 27.7% of the employment across them, the largest being finance and insurance. Demand reaches this base from more than one market rather than from a single one.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 1.4x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 75.9% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Affordable rent tiers: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $35,265 can pay without cost burden (~$882/mo), and 26% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 22.3% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Low participation: 58.5% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 8.3% between 2019 and 2024, from 6,403 to 5,871.
• Short commutes: 21.0-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Cass County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Cass County shows meaningful potential for crop production attraction, with a 4.89x concentration and 74 jobs in this sub-sector. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 22.3% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

The concentrated base spans crop production, gasoline stations and fuel dealers, and credit intermediation and related activities, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 27.7% of the employment across them, the largest being finance and insurance. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.