Yuma 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 $17,088 (21.4%) under the Arizona median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 7.3% below the national average, so the nominal median of $62,876 is worth $67,827 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 15.6%, 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 18.9 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 8,409 workers (19.8% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $40,277. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 15,014 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $11.4B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $77,871 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $27,495, a 2.8x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Support Activities for Agriculture and Forestry concentrates at 44.55x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 6 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 62.1% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: resource and agricultural commodities. Read the count as depth within that single demand base rather than as spread across separate ones.
• Attraction whitespace: 5 sub-sectors register LQ < 0.5 with at least 50 employed, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 3.5x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• High home ownership: 71% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 16.7% of housing units are vacant, above the Arizona rate of 10.5%, and down from 21.1% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 68.2% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 13% of the vacant stock, or 2.2% of all housing units against the 16.7% 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: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $46,299 can pay without cost burden (~$1,157/mo), and 43.1% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Low participation: 52.8% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 0.7% between 2019 and 2024, from 88,216 to 87,573.
• Short commutes: 21.3-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.

Yuma County shows strong potential for support activities for agriculture and forestry attraction, with a 44.55x concentration and 7,471 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. Resource and agricultural commodities accounts for 62.1% of it, with support activities for agriculture and forestry the largest single sub-sector at 45.1%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.