Champaign County, Illinois

• Income gap: Households earn meaningfully less than the national median, which directly affects retail demand, housing absorption, and tax base.
• Elevated poverty: At 19.1%, the rate is in distressed-county territory and supports federal funding narratives (CDFI, NMTC, EDA).
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by -10.5 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Young population: Median age of 31 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest sector: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 16,021 workers (27.3% of the top displayed sectors), at an average wage of $83,961.
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $86,656 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $23,750, a 3.6x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Hospitals concentrates at 2.58x the national norm.
• Cluster depth: 4 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, suggesting an interconnected industrial base rather than reliance on a single employer or sector.
• Attraction whitespace: 8 sub-sectors register LQ < 0.5, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 3.3x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• Elevated vacancy: 10.1% vacancy rate; potential opportunity for redevelopment or repositioning.
• Broadly affordable rents: All 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom tiers sit below the 30%-of-median-income affordability threshold (~$1,592/mo), a clear cost-of-living advantage for workforce attraction.

• Strong participation: 75.3% labor force participation among working-age residents indicates an engaged, available workforce.
• Short commutes: 16.9-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 6 local institutions feed the workforce; the top three combined produce 37,237 annual credentials.

Champaign County shows emerging potential for hospitals attraction, with a 2.58x concentration and 8,609 jobs in this sub-sector.

The interconnected base across hospitals, plastics and rubber products manufacturing, and food manufacturing creates supply-chain attraction leverage rather than single-employer risk, a structural advantage for industrial recruitment.

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