Jefferson County, Iowa

• Income gap: Households earn meaningfully less than the national median, which directly affects retail demand, housing absorption, and tax base.
• Elevated poverty: At 15.2%, the rate is in economically distressed territory and supports federal funding narratives (CDFI, NMTC, EDA).
• Talent advantage: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment exceeds the national average by 7.5 pts, supports knowledge-economy and tech attraction.
• Aging population: Median age of 44 is materially above the U.S. norm; succession planning and senior-services demand are real factors.

• Largest sector: Finance and Insurance employs 1,022 workers (23.3% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $91,494.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $911M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $106,615 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $19,534, a 5.5x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Clothing, Clothing Accessories, Shoe, and Jewelry Retailers concentrates at 2.37x the national norm.
• Cluster depth: 6 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, suggesting an interconnected industrial base rather than reliance on a single employer or sector.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 2.7x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• Broadly affordable rents: All 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom tiers sit below the 30%-of-median-income affordability threshold (~$1,540/mo), a clear cost-of-living advantage for workforce attraction.

• 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.
• Short commutes: 15.9-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.

Jefferson County shows emerging potential for clothing, clothing accessories, shoe, and jewelry retailers attraction, with a 2.37x concentration and 123 jobs in this sub-sector. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 22.1% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

The interconnected base across clothing, clothing accessories, shoe, and jewelry retailers, gasoline stations and fuel dealers, and nonmetallic mineral product manufacturing creates supply-chain attraction leverage rather than single-employer risk, a structural advantage for industrial recruitment.