Barber County, Kansas

• 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 $12,349 (16.6%) under the Kansas median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 9.9% below the national average, so the nominal median of $61,926 is worth $68,730 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 8.4 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Aging population: Median age of 42 is materially above the U.S. norm; succession planning and senior-services demand are real factors.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 187 workers (25.8% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $25,451. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 666 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $229M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Manufacturing averages $80,082 while Retail Trade averages $25,451, a 3.1x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Support Activities for Mining concentrates at 37.51x 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, but 51% 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 1.6x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 81% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 26.3% of housing units are vacant, above the Kansas rate of 9.2%, and down from 31.3% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 28.1% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 9% of the vacant stock, or 2.4% of all housing units against the 26.3% 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 $36,648 can pay without cost burden (~$916/mo), and 32.8% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 26.3% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Healthy participation: 69.4% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Short commutes: 15.1-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 Barber County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Barber County shows strong potential for support activities for mining attraction, with a 37.51x concentration and 70 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 26.3% 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 51% of it, with support activities for mining the largest single sub-sector at 20.5%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.