Elmore 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 $12,441 (16.0%) 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 $65,359 is worth $68,439 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 13.3 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Young population: Median age of 33 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 906 workers (19% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $36,698. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 1,850 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $1.9B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Transportation and Warehousing averages $76,117 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $21,726, a 3.5x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Animal Production and Aquaculture concentrates at 27.69x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 9 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 39.7% of the employment across them, the largest being resource and agricultural commodities. Demand reaches this base from more than one market rather than from a single one.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 4.8x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• Affordable rent tiers: 3 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $54,150 can pay without cost burden (~$1,354/mo), and 37.4% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 63.6% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Elmore County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Elmore County shows strong potential for animal production and aquaculture attraction, with a 27.69x concentration and 319 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans animal production and aquaculture, crop production, and gasoline stations and fuel dealers, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 39.7% of the employment across them, the largest being resource and agricultural commodities. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.