Hancock County, Indiana

• Income premium: Households earn well above the national median, supporting strong retail and housing markets.

• Largest sector: Manufacturing employs 5,043 workers (21.4% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $81,404.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $4.9B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $82,060 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $22,266, a 3.7x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Warehousing and Storage concentrates at 6.12x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 9 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, suggesting an interconnected industrial base rather than reliance on a single employer or sector.
• Attraction whitespace: 8 sub-sectors register LQ < 0.5, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 2.9x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 79.5% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Affordable rent tiers: 4 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom tiers sit below the 30%-of-median-income affordability threshold (~$2,330/mo).

• Succession risk is real: 22.1% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Talent pipeline: 6 regional institutions feed the workforce; the top three combined produce 59,581 annual credentials.

Hancock County shows strong potential for warehousing and storage attraction, with a 6.12x concentration and 2,259 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 22.1% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

The interconnected base across warehousing and storage, fabricated metal product manufacturing, and nonmetallic mineral product manufacturing creates supply-chain attraction leverage rather than single-employer risk, a structural advantage for industrial recruitment.