Martin County, Minnesota

• 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 11.9 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Aging population: Median age of 44 is materially above the U.S. norm; succession planning and senior-services demand are real factors.

• Largest sector: Retail Trade employs 1,086 workers (20.4% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $34,820.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $1.4B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Wholesale Trade averages $105,479 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $16,794, a 6.3x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Animal Production and Aquaculture concentrates at 20.65x 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: 4 sub-sectors register LQ < 0.5, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 2.7x 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 (~$1,488/mo), a clear cost-of-living advantage for workforce attraction.

• Succession risk is real: 27% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Short commutes: 16.9-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 41,393 annual credentials.

Martin County shows strong potential for animal production and aquaculture attraction, with a 20.65x concentration and 300 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 27% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

The interconnected base across animal production and aquaculture, nursing and residential care facilities, and support activities for agriculture and forestry creates supply-chain attraction leverage rather than single-employer risk, a structural advantage for industrial recruitment.