Cairo, Illinois.
Typical home $44,110 (-6.4% in a year). Cape Girardeau, MO-IL metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$3 (+1%) since Feb 2021.
- 1 year
- Down $3,036 -6%
- $47,146$44,110 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Down $21,441 -33%
- $65,552$44,110 since Sep 2021
Monthly payment to buy the typical home
Home value × that month's 30-year mortgage rate, 20% down, principal and interest. This is the line households feel: prices and rates compound each other.
- Cairo$232
- Illinois$1,553
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, prices here aren't rising.
Typical home values in Cairo, IL fell 6.4% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Cairo, Alexander County, Illinois
Cairo is a city of 1,733 people in Alexander County. Half its households earn more than $41,912 a year and half less, against $47,043 across Alexander County; 19% of its people live below the poverty line. 65% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 35% are rented. Unemployment in Alexander County was 5.6% in August 2026, and the county had 3.3% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Alexander County work in schools and health care, then shops.
Written by AI Claude Sonnet 5.5 wrote this on 23 October 2026 from the figures here, a list of nearby places and what it knows. It can be wrong or out of date.
What it’s like
The place. Cairo is a small city at the southern tip of Illinois, where the Ohio and Mississippi rivers meet. Most homes are lived in by their owners, and typical home values are low, though incomes run below the county's and a good share of residents live below the poverty line. A four-year degree is held by fewer adults than in most places, and very few people work from home. Winters are cold and summers are warm, with plenty of rain and melted snow through the year.
Work. Residents work mainly in schools, hospitals and social care, followed by shops, then transport, warehouses and utilities, and manufacturing. Across Alexander County, some of the largest workplaces are Bunge North America, which processes soybeans and other oilseeds, American Commercial Barge Line, and the Egyptian CUSD 5 school district. Unemployment in the county is lower than a year ago, though the county has fewer jobs than it did the year before.
Things to do. In or beside town, Fort Defiance is an archaeological site and Magnolia Manor is a museum. A short drive away are Wickliffe Mounds, another archaeological site, and Swan Lake, which suits an afternoon by the water. Cypress Creek National Wildlife Refuge, also a short drive away, protects wild land for walking and watching wildlife.
Report a mistake
- 664households
- 13%of adults have a degree
- 19%below the poverty line
- 6%work from home
What people in Alexander County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Alexander County had 859 jobs in 2025, 3.3% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 43° and lows near 26°; warmest in July, with highs near 89° and lows near 70°. About 51 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Cairo 3N weather station, 2 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Alexander County
- Bunge North AmericaSoybean and other oilseed processing99
- American Commercial Barge LineTowing service, inland waters80
- Egyptian CUSD 5School district64FTE
- Cairo USD 1School district46FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 2 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 179 people in all across the county; Cairo has two of its own. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24); FTE marks full-time equivalent staff. Not listed: many offices and banks, which need not report to OSHA; military bases, whose staff OPM withholds; and, in about half the states, city and county governments.
Natural hazards
- EarthquakesRelatively high
- Ice stormsRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- DroughtRelatively moderate
- TornadoesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Cairo’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively moderate. It is meant for planning, not a substitute for a local risk assessment or a flood map: FEMA’s index.
From the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 census and its American Community Survey (2020–2024 five-year estimates), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A survey, so each figure has a margin of error, and figures it is not sure of are left out. More on Alexander County and the Cape Girardeau, MO-IL metro.
Cairo home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Cairo$44,110
- Illinois$295,943
- United States$366,157
When this market ran hot
Each cell is that month's year-on-year home-value growth. Read left to right, top row is the latest year — the 2021–22 band is the boom.
Zip codes with a Cairo address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Cairo — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.