Elkhart County, Indiana

• 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 $3,396 (4.7%) under the Indiana median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 9.7% below the national average, so the nominal median of $68,561 is worth $75,926 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 15.6 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Manufacturing employs 60,633 workers (54.7% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $65,456. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 8,757 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $20.6B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Management of Companies and Enterprises averages $225,202 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $21,119, a 10.7x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Transportation Equipment Manufacturing concentrates at 20.74x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 13 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 90.8% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: goods manufacturing. Read the count as depth within that single demand base rather than as spread across separate ones.
• Attraction whitespace: 6 sub-sectors register LQ < 0.5 with at least 50 employed, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 3.1x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• High home ownership: 71.6% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 10.2% of housing units are vacant, above the Indiana rate of 8.8%, and up from 9.3% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is units for rent at 37.8% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 11.4%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 42.3% of the vacant stock, or 4.3% of all housing units against the 10.2% headline vacancy rate. That is the figure to plan an incoming employer's housing against, 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 $40,379 can pay without cost burden (~$1,009/mo), and 43.1% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 65.1% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Short commutes: 20.0-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 2 institutions in Elkhart County award 248 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Elkhart County shows strong potential for transportation equipment manufacturing attraction, with a 20.74x concentration and 32,785 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. Goods manufacturing accounts for 90.8% of it, with transportation equipment manufacturing the largest single sub-sector at 51.8%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.