The Economic Impact of Illinois’s Livestock Industry

The goal of this report is to provide the Illinois Livestock industry with an economic snapshot of the current state of the industry. The State’s livestock and meat and dairy processing sectors significantly contribute to the state’s economy in three important ways: 1) significant economic activity in the form of output, jobs and taxes; 2) real growth for an overall declining Illinois economy; and 3) important local impacts in key county and legislative regions. This contribution becomes increasingly important when other sectors in the economy have shed jobs and declined in recent years. Livestock contributes $3.5B of total impact and over 25,000 jobs to the State’s economy. When combined with meat and dairy processing the entire complex produces $27B of total impact, or 5% of the state’s economy, and 99,000 jobs, or 1.4% of the State’s jobs. The industry continues to serves as an economic engine in both rural and urban areas of the state. Since 2000, the trend in Illinois livestock output shows modest growth in the real value of products sold. Pork and poultry lead with positive real growth, dairy is nominally flat and declined in real terms, and beef and sheep and lamb marketings decline both nominally and in real terms.