Ellsworth, Illinois.
Typical home $255,274 (+3.5% in a year). Bloomington, IL metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$622 (+87%) since Feb 2022.
- 1 year
- Up $8,694 +4%
- $246,580$255,274 since Sep 2025
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.
- Ellsworth$1,340
- Illinois$1,553
- United States$1,922
Typical home values in Ellsworth, IL rose 3.5% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Ellsworth, McLean County, Illinois
Ellsworth is a village of 184 people in McLean County. Half its households earn more than $77,750 a year and half less, against $79,905 across McLean County; 15% of its people live below the poverty line. Unemployment in McLean County was 3.4% in August 2026, and the county had 2.2% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in McLean County work in schools and health care, then finance and property.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Ellsworth is a very small village in McLean County, Illinois, where neighbors are likely to know one another by sight. Household incomes run a little below the county's, and typical home values sit at a level that many longtime owners would find within reach. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month and a fair amount of snow, while summers turn warm in July and rain and melted snow fall through the year.
Work. Residents mostly work in schools, hospitals and social care, followed by banks, insurance and property, then shops and professional and business services. Few work from home, and the typical commute is long, so many people travel some distance to their jobs. Across McLean County, Illinois State University, McLean County USD 5 and Rivian are among the largest workplaces, and the county has fewer jobs than it did a year earlier.
Things to do. The Sangamon River runs in or beside town, and Moraine View State Recreation Area, a protected area, is also right there for walking and time outdoors. The Grand Village of the Kickapoo, an archaeological site, is likewise in or beside town. A longer drive brings you to Miller Park Zoo in Bloomington, and Fell Arboretum, a botanical garden, is another longer drive away.
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- 14%of adults have a degree
- 15%below the poverty line
- 37 mintypical commute
- 3%work from home
What people in McLean County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. McLean County had 87,006 jobs in 2025, 2.2% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 33° and lows near 16°; warmest in July, with highs near 86° and lows near 63°. About 20 inches of snow and 39 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Normal 4NE weather station, 14 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in McLean County
- Rivian Motorway (Normal, Illinois)Assembly plants, light trucks on chassis of own manufacture5,309
- Illinois State UniversityUniversity or college3,570
- McLean County USD 5School district1,988FTE
- City of BloomingtonParks, nature1,113
- Carle Bromenn Medical CenterGeneral hospital1,030FTE
- St. Joseph Medical CenterGeneral hospital843FTE
- FerreroChocolate bars made from cocoa beans678
- Bloomington SD 87School district565FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 144 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 28,686 people in all across the county; Ellsworth has none of its own. Colleges come from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24), school districts from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24) and hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023); 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
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- DroughtRelatively moderate
- HailRelatively moderate
- Strong windRelatively moderate
- Winter weatherRelatively moderate
- TornadoesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Ellsworth’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively low. 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 McLean County and the Bloomington, IL metro.
Ellsworth home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Ellsworth$255,274
- 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 Ellsworth address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Ellsworth — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.