Haines Borough, Alaska

• Income premium: Households earn well above the national median, supporting strong retail and housing markets.
• Below the state median: Median household income runs $5,861 (6.3%) under the Alaska median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Aging population: Median age of 51 is materially above the U.S. norm; succession planning and senior-services demand are real factors.

• Largest private-sector industry: Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation employs 159 workers (26.4% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $25,304. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 196 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $150M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Construction averages $78,653 while Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation averages $25,304, a 3.1x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Amusement, Gambling, and Recreation Industries concentrates at 12.06x 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, but 55.8% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: visitor economy. Read the count as depth within that single demand base rather than as spread across separate ones.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 3.4x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• High home ownership: 78.5% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 34.7% of housing units are vacant, above the Alaska rate of 17.6%, and down from 40.4% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 81.3% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 2.9% of the vacant stock, or 1% of all housing units against the 34.7% headline vacancy rate. Absorbable supply for an incoming employer is thin, and the gap between the two is the redevelopment and conversion opportunity.

• Succession risk is real: 35% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Low participation: 58.1% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 20.5% between 2019 and 2024, from 1,240 to 986.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Haines Borough per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Haines Borough shows strong potential for amusement, gambling, and recreation industries attraction, with a 12.06x concentration and 142 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 35% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

Most of the employment across the concentrated sub-sectors traces back to a single source of demand. Visitor economy accounts for 55.8% of it, with amusement, gambling, and recreation industries the largest single sub-sector at 44.8%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.