Scotts Bluff 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 8.7 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest sector: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 2,605 workers (23.1% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $65,214.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $2.4B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Construction averages $75,137 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $21,074, a 3.6x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Animal Production and Aquaculture concentrates at 4.13x 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: 6 sub-sectors register LQ < 0.5, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 2.6x 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 (~$1,590/mo), a clear cost-of-living advantage for workforce attraction.

• Succession risk is real: 22.6% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Short commutes: 15.6-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.

Scotts Bluff County shows meaningful potential for animal production and aquaculture attraction, with a 4.13x concentration and 114 jobs in this sub-sector. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 22.6% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

The interconnected base across animal production and aquaculture, construction of buildings, and building material and garden supply retailers creates supply-chain attraction leverage rather than single-employer risk, a structural advantage for industrial recruitment.