With 0.5 jobs for every working resident, most of Grant Park works elsewhere
Employers in Grant Park report 262 jobs; 535 of its residents have a job. Grant Park grades B for jobs and income and A− for walkability. For 6% of workers, the job is at home, next to 16% for Illinois as a whole.
Census ACS 2020–24, Census LEHD 2023, EPA Smart Location Database. How the two grades are made
How Grant Park earns its Jobs & income grade
On income, poverty and job access, Grant Park is better than 60% of U.S. towns. All three inputs sit close together, so no single one decides Grant Park’s grade. It also does well on household income and the poverty rate.
Unemployment (8.6%) is left out: Grant Park’s labor force is under 1,000, too few workers for a steady figure.
A rough placement. Within the Census margins of error for income and poverty, Grant Park could be anywhere from C+ to A−.
Grant Park on a workday afternoon
On a workday 496 residents head out to work, 39 work right here, and 223 people come in from elsewhere.
About 1,000 people are in Grant Park on a workday afternoon, 21% fewer than live here.
Workday population = residents − those who work elsewhere + those who come in (the Census “commuter-adjusted” method). Residents: Census survey; commuters: LEHD 2023, primary jobs.
8% of working residents work in Kankakee
Where Grant Park clocks in
8% of workers
7% of workers
4% of workersLines run between town centers. The top 10 towns each way; “Everywhere else” is the rest, including other states.
A thicker line means more commuters. Switch between where residents work and where the people who work here live.
Jobs in Grant Park: what the 262 are
What kind of work
What it pays
Who does it
Jobs based in Grant Park, 2013 → 2023: 281 → 262. Big swings can come from how a large employer reports its locations, not only from real openings or closings.
Primary jobs covered by unemployment insurance (not the self-employed). Pay is monthly earnings. LEHD 2023.
Here is what they are, next to the jobs Grant Park’s own residents hold wherever they work.
About 29 minutes each way, about the IL average
Round trip, about 230 workdays a year: roughly 9.2 full days in the car, bus or train.
Average commute minutes, one way
of Grant Park workers work from home, vs 16% across Illinois. Their commute is the hallway.
Share of the 464 commuters (the 5% who work from home are left out). Across Illinois: 78% drive alone, 7% take transit; U.S.: 81% and 4%. Census ACS 2020–24.
From the Census survey of workers who don’t work from home.
The distance from Grant Park to work
About 18% show a job over 50 miles away. Some of that is real, and some is employers that report every worker at a head office, so a few long commutes are on paper only.
Straight-line distance from each worker’s home block to their main job’s block. LEHD 2023.
Every working resident’s trip, home to work, as the crow flies. Roads add to it, so real drives run longer.
Grant Park is more walkable than most U.S. towns, with limited transit
On EPA’s walkability index and the share of commuters who walk, bike or take transit, Grant Park is more walkable than 83% of U.S. towns. How people get to work scores higher than the street layout: 7.1% of commuters walk, bike or take transit, against 10.8% across Illinois, on an EPA index of 8.1.
A firm grade. EPA’s index has no published margin of error; the commuting share comes from a Census survey of 491 workers.
How TownRatings grades walkability →
Transit service: no data. EPA’s transit file has no stops for most of this county (its agencies had not published schedules in the format EPA used in 2020). That is missing data, not a finding that there is no bus or train.
Households without a car (shown, not graded). 5.4% of Grant Park households have no vehicle (Illinois 11.0%, U.S. 8.4%). 1% of Grant Park’s commuters take a bus or train.
1,192nd of 4,866: where Grant Park ranks among U.S. towns of 900 to 1,700
| # | Town | People | Household income | Poverty | Unemployment | Work in town | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Somerset MD | 1,151 | $250K | 1.9% | 2.3% | <1% | A+ |
| 2 | Bellerose NY | 1,169 | $232K | 1.6% | 6.1% | 1% | A+ |
| 3 | Baxter Estates NY | 1,014 | $154K | 1.0% | 3.1% | 1% | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 25 | Tower Lakes IL | 1,201 | $154K | 2.0% | 2.8% | <1% | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 28 | Third Lake IL | 1,103 | $150K | 2.0% | 2.3% | 1% | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 33 | Lily Lake IL | 1,073 | $140K | 0.2% | 8.9% | 0% | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 1,190 | La Villita NM | 1,534 | $104K | 4.7% | 0.0% | 0% | B |
| 1,191 | Pumpkin Center NC | 1,636 | $64K | 2.9% | 8.6% | 0% | B |
| 1,192 | Grant Park IL | 1,271 | $78K | 9.0% | 8.6% | 7% | B |
| 1,193 | Menominee Township IL | 1,030 | $90K | 9.3% | 2.2% | 3% | B |
| 1,194 | Middlebury Township MI | 1,528 | $77K | 7.7% | 6.8% | 1% | B |
| … | |||||||
| 4,866 | Oglala SD | 1,071 | $21K | 68.8% | 26.5% | 0% | D− |
Census ACS 2020–24 (income, poverty, unemployment), Census LEHD (work in town), TownRatings Jobs & income grades. Each town links to its Work & commute page.
Ranked on the Jobs & income grade: the towns either side of Grant Park, the top three, the last and three more from Illinois.
What this data can and can’t tell you
- Two sources, two years. Trips, distances and jobs based here: Census LEHD 2023, primary jobs, where the employer reports them. Income, poverty, unemployment, commute time and how people travel: Census ACS 2020–24 averages.
- Straight lines, older transit. Miles are as the crow flies. EPA’s walkability and transit files use 2017–20 inputs.
Jobs and commuting in Grant Park: questions
What is the median household income in Grant Park?
$78,385 (±$11,417) (Census ACS 2020–24), against $83,390 across Illinois and $80,734 nationally.
What is the poverty rate in Grant Park?
9.0%, against 11.8% across Illinois and 12.5% nationally (Census ACS 2020–24).
How long is the commute from Grant Park?
29 minutes each way on average, against 28 across Illinois and 26 nationally. 6% of workers work from home.
Where do people who live in Grant Park work?
7% work in town. The top destinations elsewhere are Kankakee (8%, 15 mi), Chicago (7%, 41 mi), Momence (4%, 6 mi) (Census LEHD 2023).
Is Grant Park walkable?
Grant Park is more walkable than 83% of U.S. towns (Walkability A−): an EPA walkability index of 8.1 out of 20, and 7% of commuters walk, bike or take transit.
Can you get around Grant Park without a car?
1% of commuters take transit and 5% of households have no car. EPA has no transit data for this county.
Commuter talk
Getting to work from Grant Park, from the people who make the trip.
More of Grant Park
Flows, distances and jobs: U.S. Census Bureau, LEHD Origin-Destination Employment Statistics (LODES 8), 2023, primary jobs. Commute time, working from home and working out of state: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates. Distances are straight lines between home and work; real drives run longer. Walkability index, job access and transit service: U.S. EPA Smart Location Database. The two grades are our own summaries of these figures, not official ratings.