Kingman 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 $14,433 (19.4%) 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 $59,842 is worth $66,417 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 10.4 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: Construction employs 634 workers (40.2% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $61,605. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 576 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $334M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Real Estate and Rental and Leasing averages $87,079 while Retail Trade averages $30,611, a 2.8x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Oil and Gas Extraction concentrates at 10.48x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 7 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 55.9% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: construction and real estate cycle. 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 1.9x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• Elevated vacancy: 14.1% of housing units are vacant, above the Kansas rate of 9.2%, and down from 18.6% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 27.6% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 20.6% of the vacant stock, or 2.9% of all housing units against the 14.1% 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 $45,294 can pay without cost burden (~$1,132/mo), and 29.5% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 27.2% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Healthy participation: 62.4% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Kingman County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Kingman County shows strong potential for oil and gas extraction attraction, with a 10.48x concentration and 21 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 27.2% 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. Construction and real estate cycle accounts for 55.9% of it, all of it in specialty trade contractors. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.