Crawford County, Kansas

• Income gap: Households earn meaningfully less than the national median, which directly affects retail demand, housing absorption, and tax base.
• Elevated poverty: At 20.6%, the rate is in economically distressed territory and supports federal funding narratives (CDFI, NMTC, EDA).
• Young population: Median age of 34 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest sector: Manufacturing employs 2,798 workers (24.8% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $57,203.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $2.2B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Transportation and Warehousing averages $87,684 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $17,222, a 5.1x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Printing and Related Support Activities concentrates at 12.18x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 10 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 2.5x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• Elevated vacancy: 12.6% 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.
• Affordable rent tiers: 4 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom tiers sit below the 30%-of-median-income affordability threshold (~$1,321/mo).

• Short commutes: 17.8-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 17,685 annual credentials.

Crawford County shows strong potential for printing and related support activities attraction, with a 12.18x concentration and 460 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The interconnected base across printing and related support activities, plastics and rubber products manufacturing, and wood product manufacturing creates supply-chain attraction leverage rather than single-employer risk, a structural advantage for industrial recruitment.