Poweshiek 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 8.4 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest sector: Manufacturing employs 1,593 workers (28.5% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $57,510.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $1.7B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $108,162 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $18,127, a 6.0x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Heavy and Civil Engineering Construction concentrates at 6.54x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 7 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.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 3.1x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• High home ownership: 71.2% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 13% vacancy rate. In resort, rural, and seasonal markets much of this is recreational/seasonal (second homes), not available supply; confirm the vacancy-by-reason split before treating it as a redevelopment opportunity.
• Broadly affordable rents: All 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom tiers sit below the 30%-of-median-income affordability threshold (~$1,685/mo), a clear cost-of-living advantage for workforce attraction.

• Short commutes: 18.6-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.

Poweshiek County shows strong potential for heavy and civil engineering construction attraction, with a 6.54x concentration and 462 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The interconnected base across heavy and civil engineering construction, crop production, and gasoline stations and fuel dealers creates supply-chain attraction leverage rather than single-employer risk, a structural advantage for industrial recruitment.