Clark 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 $11,232 (15.1%) 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 $63,043 is worth $69,970 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Aging population: Median age of 44 is materially above the U.S. norm; succession planning and senior-services demand are real factors.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 66 workers (75% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $20,620. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 420 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $279M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $74,592 while Retail Trade averages $20,620, a 3.6x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Animal Production and Aquaculture concentrates at 108.88x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 1.4x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 73.6% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 24.2% of housing units are vacant, above the Kansas rate of 9.2%, and up from 23.2% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 59% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 20.7%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 16.3% of the vacant stock, or 4% of all housing units against the 24.2% 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.
• Broadly affordable rents: All 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes shown above sit below what a household on the median renter income of $58,571 can pay without cost burden (~$1,464/mo), and 18.8% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened; a cost-of-living advantage for workforce attraction.

• Succession risk is real: 29% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Healthy participation: 62.6% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Short commutes: 18.2-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 Clark County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Clark County shows strong potential for animal production and aquaculture attraction, with a 108.88x concentration and 94 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 29% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.