Grant County, Kansas

• 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 10.6 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Young population: Median age of 33 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest sector: Wholesale Trade employs 341 workers (23.6% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $72,157.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $642M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction averages $82,089 while Retail Trade averages $27,897, a 2.9x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Animal Production and Aquaculture concentrates at 55.49x 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: 3 sub-sectors register LQ < 0.5, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 1.7x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 76.7% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 18.9% 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 (~$1,662/mo), a clear cost-of-living advantage for workforce attraction.

• Talent pipeline: 6 regional institutions feed the workforce; the top three combined produce 17,685 annual credentials.

Grant County shows strong potential for animal production and aquaculture attraction, with a 55.49x concentration and 257 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The interconnected base across animal production and aquaculture, support activities for mining, and repair and maintenance creates supply-chain attraction leverage rather than single-employer risk, a structural advantage for industrial recruitment.