Cape Girardeau County, Missouri

• Income gap: Households earn meaningfully less than the national median, which directly affects retail demand, housing absorption, and tax base.

• Largest sector: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 10,437 workers (32.2% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $62,573.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $5.4B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $84,430 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $22,167, a 3.8x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Mining (except Oil and Gas) concentrates at 3.59x the national norm, strong concentration that anchors the local economy and supports supply-chain attraction strategy.
• 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.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 3.2x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• Elevated vacancy: 10.1% 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 (~$1,712/mo), a clear cost-of-living advantage for workforce attraction.

• Short commutes: 19.5-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 21,457 annual credentials.

Cape Girardeau County shows meaningful potential for mining (except oil and gas) attraction, with a 3.59x concentration and 180 jobs in this sub-sector.

The interconnected base across mining (except oil and gas), electrical equipment, appliance manufacturing, and plastics and rubber products manufacturing creates supply-chain attraction leverage rather than single-employer risk, a structural advantage for industrial recruitment.