Graham County, Arizona

• 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 $12,639 (15.8%) under the Arizona median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Elevated poverty: At 17.3%, 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 21.1 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Young population: Median age of 35 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 1,556 workers (28% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $35,870. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 2,960 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $2B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Wholesale Trade averages $75,730 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $21,091, a 3.6x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Printing and Related Support Activities concentrates at 5.59x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 8 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 81.3% 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.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 3.1x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• High home ownership: 73.1% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Affordable rent tiers: 3 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $59,006 can pay without cost burden (~$1,475/mo), and 25.6% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Low participation: 53.4% labor force participation against a labor force that grew 12.9% between 2019 and 2024, so workforce development programs may unlock additional supply.
• Talent pipeline: 1 institution in Graham County awards 1,027 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Graham County shows strong potential for printing and related support activities attraction, with a 5.59x concentration and 117 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

Most of the employment across the concentrated sub-sectors traces back to a single source of demand. Resident household spending accounts for 81.3% of it, with general merchandise retailers the largest single sub-sector at 26.9%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.