Ellsworth 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 $8,715 (11.7%) 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 $65,560 is worth $72,764 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 13.0 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• 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: Manufacturing employs 292 workers (26.5% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $62,788. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 865 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $310M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Construction averages $129,540 while Retail Trade averages $23,389, 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 4.28x the national norm, strong concentration that anchors the local economy and supports supply-chain attraction strategy.
• Cluster depth: 4 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 40.1% of the employment across them, the largest being construction and real estate cycle. Demand reaches this base from more than one market rather than from a single one.

• 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: 80.2% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 21.6% of housing units are vacant, above the Kansas rate of 9.2%, and down from 26.2% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 40.2% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 15.7% of the vacant stock, or 3.4% of all housing units against the 21.6% 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 $28,558 can pay without cost burden (~$714/mo), and 40.6% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Low participation: 50.8% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 2.4% between 2019 and 2024, from 2,800 to 2,732.
• Short commutes: 19.2-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 Ellsworth County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Ellsworth County shows meaningful potential for gasoline stations and fuel dealers attraction, with a 4.28x concentration and 48 jobs in this sub-sector.

The concentrated base spans gasoline stations and fuel dealers, nursing and residential care facilities, and specialty trade contractors, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 40.1% of the employment across them, the largest being construction and real estate cycle. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.