Siskiyou 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 $40,027 (40.4%) 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 $59,095 is worth $53,383 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 16.4%, 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 12.4 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Aging population: Median age of 47 is materially above the U.S. norm; succession planning and senior-services demand are real factors.

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 2,242 workers (28.1% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $56,838. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 4,152 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $2.3B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Construction averages $70,349 while Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation averages $22,894, a 3.1x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Forestry and Logging concentrates at 72.40x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 14 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 26.2% 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 5.2x is well above the ~4.1x national average; attainable workforce housing may be a recruitment friction.
• Elevated vacancy: 17.4% of housing units are vacant, above the California rate of 7.5%, and down from 20.2% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 56.5% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 9% of the vacant stock, or 1.6% of all housing units against the 17.4% headline vacancy rate. Absorbable supply for an incoming employer is thin, and the gap between the two is the redevelopment and conversion opportunity.
• Rent affordability gap: None of the 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $35,382 can pay without cost burden (~$885/mo), and 52.2% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 29.5% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Succession risk is real: 27.3% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Low participation: 50.9% labor force participation against a labor force that grew 2.5% between 2019 and 2024, so workforce development programs may unlock additional supply.
• Short commutes: 21.2-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 1 institution in Siskiyou County awards 369 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Siskiyou County shows strong potential for forestry and logging attraction, with a 72.40x concentration and 259 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 27.3% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

The concentrated base spans forestry and logging, crop production, and wood product manufacturing, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 26.2% of the employment across them, the largest being resident household spending. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.