Adams County, Idaho

• 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 $15,992 (20.6%) under the Idaho median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 4.5% below the national average, so the nominal median of $61,808 is worth $64,720 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 17.9%, 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 14.1 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Aging population: Median age of 54 is materially above the U.S. norm; succession planning and senior-services demand are real factors.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 143 workers (35.4% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $33,828. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 299 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $205M (2024).

• Top specialization: Animal Production and Aquaculture concentrates at 9.73x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 3 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 53.3% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: construction and real estate cycle. Read the count as depth within that single demand base rather than as spread across separate ones.

• Stretched market: Home value to income ratio of 6.1x is well above the ~4.1x national average; attainable workforce housing may be a recruitment friction.
• High home ownership: 84.7% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 33.6% of housing units are vacant, above the Idaho rate of 10.3%, and down from 34.7% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 85.3% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 5.9% of the vacant stock, or 2% of all housing units against the 33.6% 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 $36,250 can pay without cost burden (~$906/mo), and 32.8% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 33% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Low participation: 47.3% labor force participation against a labor force that grew 10% between 2019 and 2024, so workforce development programs may unlock additional supply.
• Short commutes: 19.7-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Adams County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Adams County shows strong potential for animal production and aquaculture attraction, with a 9.73x concentration and 14 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 33% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

Most of the employment across the concentrated sub-sectors traces back to a single source of demand. Construction and real estate cycle accounts for 53.3% of it, all of it in specialty trade contractors. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.