Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area, Alaska

• Income gap: Households earn meaningfully less than the national median, which directly affects retail demand, housing absorption, and tax base.
• Below the state median: Median household income runs $37,047 (39.9%) under the Alaska median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Elevated poverty: At 16%, the rate is in economically distressed territory and supports federal funding narratives (CDFI, NMTC, EDA).
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 19.7 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 100 workers (34.5% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $30,291. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 1,664 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $384M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Transportation and Warehousing averages $123,534 while Information averages $18,458, a 6.7x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Religious, Grantmaking, Civic, Professional Orgs concentrates at 13.78x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 4 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 100% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: resident household spending. Read the count as depth within that single demand base rather than as spread across separate ones.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 1.8x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• Elevated vacancy: 38.3% of housing units are vacant, above the Alaska rate of 17.6%, and down from 54.6% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 55.5% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 1.5% of the vacant stock, or 0.6% of all housing units against the 38.3% headline vacancy rate. Absorbable supply for an incoming employer is thin, and the gap between the two is the redevelopment and conversion opportunity.
• Affordable rent tiers: 3 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $57,452 can pay without cost burden (~$1,436/mo), and 12.7% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 22.5% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Healthy participation: 66.7% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Short commutes: 11.0-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area shows strong potential for religious, grantmaking, civic, professional orgs attraction, with a 13.78x concentration and 95 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 22.5% 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. Resident household spending accounts for 100% of it, with religious, grantmaking, civic, professional orgs the largest single sub-sector at 49.5%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.