Nemaha County, Kansas

• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 5.8 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest sector: Manufacturing employs 1,422 workers (37.3% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $66,296.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $667M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Transportation and Warehousing averages $73,910 while Retail Trade averages $31,834, a 2.3x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Animal Production and Aquaculture concentrates at 19.31x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 9 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, suggesting an interconnected industrial base rather than reliance on a single employer or sector.
• Attraction whitespace: 7 sub-sectors register LQ < 0.5, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 2.8x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 78% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 10.7% 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 (~$1,934/mo), a clear cost-of-living advantage for workforce attraction.

• Succession risk is real: 25.1% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Short commutes: 14.8-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.

Nemaha County shows strong potential for animal production and aquaculture attraction, with a 19.31x concentration and 193 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 25.1% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

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