Hood River County, Oregon

• Income premium: Households earn well above the national median, supporting strong retail and housing markets.
• Talent advantage: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment exceeds the national average by 5.3 pts, supports knowledge-economy and tech attraction.

• Largest sector: Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting employs 2,207 workers (19.1% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $36,836.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $1.8B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $114,562 while Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation averages $30,825, a 3.7x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Crop Production concentrates at 38.45x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 7 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.

• Stretched market: Home value to income ratio of 7.4x is well above the ~4.1x national average; attainable workforce housing may be a recruitment friction.
• Elevated vacancy: 13.1% 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.
• Affordable rent tiers: 3 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom tiers sit below the 30%-of-median-income affordability threshold (~$2,224/mo).

• Succession risk is real: 22.2% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Short commutes: 18.3-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 21,110 annual credentials.

Hood River County shows strong potential for crop production attraction, with a 38.45x concentration and 1,803 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 22.2% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

The interconnected base across crop production, beverage and tobacco product manufacturing, and amusement, gambling, and recreation industries creates supply-chain attraction leverage rather than single-employer risk, a structural advantage for industrial recruitment.