Madison 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 $17,640 (22.7%) 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 $60,160 is worth $62,995 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 24.5%, the rate is in economically distressed territory and supports federal funding narratives (CDFI, NMTC, EDA).
• Talent advantage: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment exceeds the national average by 6.1 pts, supports knowledge-economy and tech attraction.
• Young population: Median age of 21 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest private-sector industry: Educational Services employs 2,277 workers (17.5% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $64,036. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 2,689 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $2B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $71,026 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $15,376, a 4.6x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Educational Services concentrates at 6.18x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 6 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 61.4% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: education economy. 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 6.9x is well above the ~4.1x national average; attainable workforce housing may be a recruitment friction.
• Renter-majority market: 40.2% owner-occupied; flexible labor mobility but consider home-buying pipeline if attracting families.
• Elevated vacancy: 12% of housing units are vacant, above the Idaho rate of 10.3%, and down from 22.6% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 37.9% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 19.1%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 20.6% of the vacant stock, or 2.5% of all housing units against the 12% 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: 3 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $48,132 can pay without cost burden (~$1,203/mo), and 46.7% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 68.5% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Short commutes: 16.4-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 4 institutions in Madison County award 8,385 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Madison County shows strong potential for educational services attraction, with a 6.18x concentration and 2,277 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

Most of the employment across the concentrated sub-sectors traces back to a single source of demand. Education economy accounts for 61.4% of it, all of it in educational services. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.