Menard 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 $1,214 (1.5%) under the Illinois median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 7.3% below the national average, so the nominal median of $82,176 is worth $88,647 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 7.4 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Aging population: Median age of 43 is materially above the U.S. norm; succession planning and senior-services demand are real factors.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 234 workers (31.5% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $27,303. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 605 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $364M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Wholesale Trade averages $99,862 while Manufacturing averages $18,320, a 5.5x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Beverage and Tobacco Product Manufacturing concentrates at 12.57x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 7 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 50.6% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: resident household spending. Read the count as depth within that single demand base rather than as spread across separate ones.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 2.3x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 79.5% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Affordable rent tiers: 1 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $34,461 can pay without cost burden (~$862/mo), and 48.1% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 26.6% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Low participation: 59.3% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 11.8% between 2019 and 2024, from 6,579 to 5,802.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Menard County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Menard County shows strong potential for beverage and tobacco product manufacturing attraction, with a 12.57x concentration and 37 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 26.6% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

Most of the employment across the concentrated sub-sectors traces back to a single source of demand. Resident household spending accounts for 50.6% of it, with specialty trade contractors the largest single sub-sector at 22.6%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.