Des Moines County, Iowa

• Income gap: Households earn meaningfully less than the national median, which directly affects retail demand, housing absorption, and tax base.
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 11.9 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Aging population: Median age of 42 is materially above the U.S. norm; succession planning and senior-services demand are real factors.

• Largest sector: Manufacturing employs 4,068 workers (25.7% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $65,621.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $2.9B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $73,970 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $19,754, a 3.7x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Fabricated Metal Product Manufacturing concentrates at 6.96x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 8 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 2.2x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 74.6% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Broadly affordable rents: All 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom tiers sit below the 30%-of-median-income affordability threshold (~$1,573/mo), a clear cost-of-living advantage for workforce attraction.

• Succession risk is real: 24.2% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Short commutes: 18.0-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 6 regional institutions feed the workforce; the top three combined produce 21,768 annual credentials.

Des Moines County shows strong potential for fabricated metal product manufacturing attraction, with a 6.96x concentration and 1,280 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 24.2% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

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