National Purposes

Kolko Report Investigation into Illinois Sectors

Here are four maps profiling the spatial patterns associated with key industries associated with benefiting from broadband referenced in the Kolko Report or sectors deemed critical to the Illinois' economy for the BDC Research Committee. These industries are associated global economic connectivity, utilities (smart-grid), agriculture, and health care.  The Illinois GDP around $610 billion. 

Summary

Here are conclusions from viewing and looking at the data:

1. Management sector is clearly focused in Chicago Land Region - Financial Services and Board of Trade are probably driving these trends ($1.8 Billion Economy with around 14,000 employees).

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2. Utility sector is much larger ($7.5 billion and around 18,000 workers) and their employers are more equally distributed across the State.  Chicago Land accounted for around 80% of the management economy; whereas, the utility sector accounted for only 35% in Chicago Land.  Specifically, three regions downstate have much high proportions of this sector than their populations would tend to justify. This would tend to indicate a cluster or economic activity and workers in these regions for utilities.  See the Southern Region.

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3.  It is interesting to note that the agriculture sector is one generally found across the board in each region. 

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4.  The final map, Health care, does not have regional eTeam breakdowns on each region's portion of the Illinois economy for a given sector relative to sales volume or employee counts. Due to the size of this sector, which has over 34,000 employers, my machine simply could not handle this amount of geo-processing with a spatial join operation.

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