USA Opportunity Zones

This tool is a concise, powerful way to link opportunity zones (OZs) with EDA investments that are aimed to improve the business climate and help people out of poverty. It combines location information (where are the zones?) with economic and demographic reports that describe the zone itself, as well as the intersection of EDA's Economic Development District, University Center programs, and Revolving Loan Funds.

New: Opportunity Zones Best Practices Report to the President.

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Overview

More than 8,700 opportunity zones have been designated across the United States, established as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and are intended to foster long-term private sector investments in low-income communities. We can now begin to show the intersection of EDA's public investments and activities (more information will be added) near or within these zones. An initial assessment on the impact of these zones is available in this August 2020 report from the Council of Economic Advisors.

35.2 million

people live in
opportunity zones

98%

of all economic development districts have an opportunity zone

11%

of the population live in an opportunity zone

What are Opportunity Zones?

Qualified opportunity zones were created by the federal 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and designed to spur economic development by bringing private investment to areas that might otherwise have difficulty attracting it.

These zones (8,764) consist of low-income census tracts nominated by each of the 50 states and U.S. territories and comprise economically distressed areas where new investments may be eligible for preferential tax treatment and the resulting investments, according to the U.S. Treasury.

The IRS and the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI) are responsible for the program and provide multiple resources to learn more about how the zones are designated and how zone funds are being set up.

What are Economic Development Districts?

EDA has designated more than 390 Economic Development Districts across the United States. They are commonly composed of multiple counties and in certain cases even cross-state borders.

EDD map on a tablet

EDDs help lead the locally based, regionally driven economic development planning process. They leverage the involvement of the public, private and nonprofit sectors to establish a Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS), which is a strategy-driven plan for regional economic development.

Use the tool now

Just like other StatsAmerica tools, this one is easy to use: just zoom the map to an area of the country, click on a blue-shaded census tract (those are the opportunity zones) and scroll down to view multiple reports.

  • Economic developers can see the zone in the context of its congressional district, Economic Development District, State, and EDA (multi-state) Region. Content of each report includes EDA investments near or in the zones or the regions, demographic and economic metrics.

  • EDDs can integrate opportunity zones as a new investment opportunity when developing or enhancing their 5-year comprehensive economic development strategies.

  • Local economic and community developers can integrate local investment information with publicly supported projects in or near these zones.

View the additional resources section to learn more about some of the other federal government programs that support investment in opportunity zones.

Access the Opportunity Zone Tool »