Woodward County, Oklahoma

• 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 15.0 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest sector: Retail Trade employs 1,111 workers (19.5% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $34,630.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $1.4B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Manufacturing averages $107,109 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $19,050, a 5.6x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Support Activities for Mining concentrates at 53.42x 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: 8 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: 73.2% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 15.6% 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.
• Affordable rent tiers: 4 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom tiers sit below the 30%-of-median-income affordability threshold (~$1,535/mo).

• Short commutes: 21.3-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 16,669 annual credentials.

Woodward County shows strong potential for support activities for mining attraction, with a 53.42x concentration and 727 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The interconnected base across support activities for mining, pipeline transportation, and animal production and aquaculture creates supply-chain attraction leverage rather than single-employer risk, a structural advantage for industrial recruitment.