Wasco County, Oregon

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

• Largest sector: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 2,239 workers (31% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $64,535.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $2.4B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Information averages $231,352 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $27,609, a 8.4x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Crop Production concentrates at 33.62x 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 5.7x is well above the ~4.1x national average; attainable workforce housing may be a recruitment friction.
• Elevated vacancy: 13.4% 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 (~$1,604/mo).

• Succession risk is real: 22.4% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Short commutes: 18.9-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 21,110 annual credentials.

Wasco County shows strong potential for crop production attraction, with a 33.62x concentration and 1,315 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 22.4% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

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