Wright County, Iowa

• 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 $7,869 (10.5%) under the Iowa median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 12.2% below the national average, so the nominal median of $67,190 is worth $76,526 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 16.8%, 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 10.8 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Manufacturing employs 1,574 workers (48.5% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $71,059. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 1,642 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $1.2B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Management of Companies and Enterprises averages $141,900 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $15,771, a 9.0x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Animal Production and Aquaculture concentrates at 67.69x 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 55.4% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: resource and agricultural commodities. 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 1.8x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 77% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 14.7% of housing units are vacant, above the Iowa rate of 8.5%, and up from 12.2% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 31.7% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 23.8% of the vacant stock, or 3.5% of all housing units against the 14.7% 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: 4 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $45,653 can pay without cost burden (~$1,141/mo), and 34.8% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 25.2% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Healthy participation: 60.1% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Short commutes: 20.2-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 Wright County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Wright County shows strong potential for animal production and aquaculture attraction, with a 67.69x concentration and 644 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 25.2% 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. Resource and agricultural commodities accounts for 55.4% of it, all of it in animal production and aquaculture. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.