Moultrie 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 $11,606 (13.9%) 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 16.7 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Manufacturing employs 1,859 workers (48.6% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $58,396. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 494 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $981M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Construction averages $81,823 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $18,130, a 4.5x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Furniture and Related Product Manufacturing concentrates at 59.83x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 8 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 54.3% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: goods manufacturing. 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 1.9x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 76% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Affordable rent tiers: 3 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $44,206 can pay without cost burden (~$1,105/mo), and 30.1% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 24.1% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Healthy participation: 60.2% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Short commutes: 20.9-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 Moultrie County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Moultrie County shows strong potential for furniture and related product manufacturing attraction, with a 59.83x concentration and 721 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 24.1% 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. Goods manufacturing accounts for 54.3% of it, with furniture and related product manufacturing the largest single sub-sector at 36%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.