McLean County, Illinois

• Income near the national median: Median household income tracks the national median, indicating a broad-based consumer market.
• Below the state median: Median household income runs $3,485 (4.2%) under the Illinois median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 6.5% below the national average, so the nominal median of $79,905 is worth $85,460 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Talent advantage: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment exceeds the national average by 11.5 pts, supports knowledge-economy and tech attraction.
• Young population: Median age of 34 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest private-sector industry: Finance and Insurance employs 17,372 workers (25.5% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $110,363. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 12,950 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $16.9B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $110,363 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $24,635, a 4.5x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Insurance Carriers and Related Activities concentrates at 10.73x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 4 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 91.6% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: finance and insurance. Read the count as depth within that single demand base rather than as spread across separate ones.
• Attraction whitespace: 5 sub-sectors register LQ < 0.5 with at least 50 employed, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 2.6x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• Affordable rent tiers: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $40,204 can pay without cost burden (~$1,005/mo), and 40.5% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 64.8% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Short commutes: 18.3-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 4 institutions in McLean County award 7,431 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

McLean County shows strong potential for insurance carriers and related activities attraction, with a 10.73x concentration and 15,951 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

Most of the employment across the concentrated sub-sectors traces back to a single source of demand. Finance and insurance accounts for 91.6% of it, all of it in insurance carriers and related activities. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.