Keith County, Nebraska

• 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 13.0 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Aging population: Median age of 48 is materially above the U.S. norm; succession planning and senior-services demand are real factors.

• Largest sector: Retail Trade employs 634 workers (33.4% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $32,936.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $526M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $90,931 while Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation averages $19,058, a 4.8x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Gasoline Stations and Fuel Dealers concentrates at 7.30x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 6 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, suggesting an interconnected industrial base rather than reliance on a single employer or sector.
• Attraction whitespace: 5 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: 71.1% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 25.5% 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 (~$1,516/mo), a clear cost-of-living advantage for workforce attraction.

• Succession risk is real: 28.4% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Short commutes: 14.9-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 12,952 annual credentials.

Keith County shows strong potential for gasoline stations and fuel dealers attraction, with a 7.30x concentration and 159 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 28.4% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

The interconnected base across gasoline stations and fuel dealers, accommodation, and merchant wholesalers, nondurable goods creates supply-chain attraction leverage rather than single-employer risk, a structural advantage for industrial recruitment.