Plumas County, California

• 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 $33,091 (33.4%) under the California median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living erodes income: Local prices run 10.7% above the national average, so the nominal median of $66,031 is worth $59,649 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 13.2 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Aging population: Median age of 52 is materially above the U.S. norm; succession planning and senior-services demand are real factors.

• Largest private-sector industry: Accommodation and Food Services employs 637 workers (17.8% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $28,018. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 2,351 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $1.5B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Utilities averages $167,309 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $28,018, a 6.0x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Forestry and Logging concentrates at 42.86x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 12 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 29.1% of the employment across them, the largest being resident household spending. Demand reaches this base from more than one market rather than from a single one.

• Stretched market: Home value to income ratio of 5.5x is well above the ~4.1x national average; attainable workforce housing may be a recruitment friction.
• High home ownership: 74.6% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 46% of housing units are vacant, above the California rate of 7.5%, and down from 46.6% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 84.1% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 6.5% of the vacant stock, or 3% of all housing units against the 46% headline vacancy rate. That is the figure to plan an incoming employer's housing against, 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 $51,411 can pay without cost burden (~$1,285/mo), and 43% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 31.4% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Low participation: 46.7% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 5.8% between 2019 and 2024, from 8,172 to 7,700.
• Short commutes: 19.8-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 1 institution in Plumas County awards 317 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Plumas County shows strong potential for forestry and logging attraction, with a 42.86x concentration and 66 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 31.4% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

The concentrated base spans forestry and logging, utilities, and accommodation, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 29.1% of the employment across them, the largest being resident household spending. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.