Madison County, Iowa

• Income premium: Households earn well above the national median, supporting strong retail and housing markets.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 8.3% below the national average, so the nominal median of $90,855 is worth $99,079 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 8.6 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 594 workers (25.5% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $28,525. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 1,070 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $684M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Wholesale Trade averages $95,243 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $17,468, a 5.5x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Gasoline Stations and Fuel Dealers concentrates at 5.12x 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, but 50.2% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: resident household spending. Read the count as depth within that single demand base rather than as spread across separate ones.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 2.7x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 80.1% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Affordable rent tiers: 1 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $44,255 can pay without cost burden (~$1,106/mo), and 33.7% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 23.6% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Healthy participation: 69.7% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Madison County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Madison County shows strong potential for gasoline stations and fuel dealers attraction, with a 5.12x concentration and 128 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 23.6% 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. Resident household spending accounts for 50.2% of it, with specialty trade contractors the largest single sub-sector at 24.3%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.