Tehama 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 $35,338 (35.7%) 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 $63,784 is worth $57,619 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state 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 16.4 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 3,469 workers (27.8% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $48,291. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 4,479 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $2.9B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Construction averages $102,794 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $26,227, a 3.9x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Support Activities for Agriculture and Forestry concentrates at 24.00x 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, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 43.5% of the employment across them, the largest being health care economy. Demand reaches this base from more than one market rather than from a single one.
• Attraction whitespace: 3 sub-sectors register LQ < 0.5 with at least 50 employed, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• Stretched market: Home value to income ratio of 5.3x is well above the ~4.1x national average; attainable workforce housing may be a recruitment friction.
• Affordable rent tiers: 1 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $39,500 can pay without cost burden (~$988/mo), and 49.7% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 24.3% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Low participation: 53.7% labor force participation against a labor force that grew 2.1% between 2019 and 2024, so workforce development programs may unlock additional supply.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Tehama County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Tehama County shows strong potential for support activities for agriculture and forestry attraction, with a 24.00x concentration and 1,078 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 24.3% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

The concentrated base spans support activities for agriculture and forestry, crop production, and social assistance, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 43.5% of the employment across them, the largest being health care economy. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.