Stark County, Ohio

• 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 9.8 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Aging population: Median age of 42 is materially above the U.S. norm; succession planning and senior-services demand are real factors.

• Largest sector: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 28,138 workers (22.6% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $56,468.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $23.2B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $99,804 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $22,405, a 4.5x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Primary Metal Manufacturing concentrates at 9.67x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• 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: 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 2.7x 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 (~$1,698/mo), a clear cost-of-living advantage for workforce attraction.

• Succession risk is real: 23.7% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Short commutes: 21.7-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 39,395 annual credentials.

Stark County shows strong potential for primary metal manufacturing attraction, with a 9.67x concentration and 3,544 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 23.7% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

The interconnected base across primary metal manufacturing, petroleum and coal products manufacturing, and fabricated metal product manufacturing creates supply-chain attraction leverage rather than single-employer risk, a structural advantage for industrial recruitment.