CUED

Labor Market Profiles:
Crawford, Kedzie & Stockyards Industrial Parks

The report below presents a profile for an area surrounding three of the 15 parks. These parks, Crawford, Kedzie and Stockyards are partially developed industrial areas. Present development priorities include expansion and infrastructure improvements. Crawford Industrial Park is located near the Chicago-Rock Island railroad tracks between 47th Street and the Stevenson Expressway. Seventy-one firms employing over 6,000 people presently occupy the site. Kedzie Industrial Tract is bounded by 47th, Kedzie and the Chicago-Rock Island Railroad tracks. Twenty-nine firms employing over 1,200 people are located there. Stockyards Industrial Park is defined by Pershing, 47th Street, Ashland and Halsted. One hundred ten firms employ over 4,000 people in this area.

Certain zip codes either adjacent to or quite near these parks have been designated as a target area. It is this area that is the subject of the labor market profiles included below. A somewhat larger area has been utilized to analyze labor supply since some of the data used is based on Illinois Department of Employment Security service districts which take in very large territories. This larger area is designated as the expanded area. The target area was delineated based on both proximity to the industrial parks and that area with the greatest employment needs. Need in this instance was based on rate of employment and income levels. A map showing the location of both target and expanded areas is displayed on the following page.

In addition to its implications for future development of the industrial parks, the analysis that follows may also have applicability to the development of enterprise zones. While the borders of the target and expanded areas are not identical with any designated zone, the labor market information is still quite relevant to zones in the general vicinity of the target area. In this sense, the analysis to follow provides relevant information for policies in Enterprise Zones I, II and VI.

This report is organized into four parts. Part I presents a summary and our conclusions. Part II shows the geographical labor market of the industrial parks. A computer simulation model is used to estimate where new workers in the parks would be likely to come from in the absence of any policy intervention. Part III presents characteristics of the demand for labor in the target area including its industrial structure and the occupations of persons employed by these industries. Part IV presents characteristics of the supply of labor in the target area. Included in this section are demographic, economic and occupational characteristics of the employed and unemployed residents of the target area.

This website is maintained by Cedric Williams, Manager System Services,
UIC-Center for Urban Economic Development