Lawrence 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 $28,066 (33.7%) under the Illinois median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Elevated poverty: At 14.5%, the rate is in economically distressed territory and supports federal funding narratives (CDFI, NMTC, EDA).
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 20.8 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 335 workers (45.6% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $30,889. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 1,231 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $661M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction averages $87,451 while Retail Trade averages $30,889, a 2.8x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Oil and Gas Extraction concentrates at 17.66x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 1.8x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 71.8% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 14.6% of housing units are vacant, above the Illinois rate of 7.7%, and up from 11.5% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 78.2% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 5.4%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 12.8% of the vacant stock, or 1.9% of all housing units against the 14.6% headline vacancy rate. Absorbable supply for an incoming employer is thin, and the gap between the two is the redevelopment and conversion opportunity.
• Affordable rent tiers: 3 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $42,994 can pay without cost burden (~$1,075/mo), and 27.1% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Low participation: 51.2% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 1.5% between 2019 and 2024, from 6,558 to 6,459.
• Short commutes: 20.8-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 Lawrence County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Lawrence County shows strong potential for oil and gas extraction attraction, with a 17.66x concentration and 43 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.