Labette 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 $17,950 (24.2%) 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 $56,325 is worth $62,514 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 16%, 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 15.5 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Manufacturing employs 1,877 workers (45.7% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $59,982. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 2,912 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $1.1B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Management of Companies and Enterprises averages $83,077 while Other Services (except Public Administration) averages $25,175, a 3.3x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Fabricated Metal Product Manufacturing concentrates at 15.47x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 10 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 47.5% of the employment across them, the largest being goods manufacturing. Demand reaches this base from more than one market rather than from a single one.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 1.7x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 74% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 15.1% of housing units are vacant, above the Kansas rate of 9.2%, and down from 18.7% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 65.3% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 2.5%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 22.8% of the vacant stock, or 3.4% of all housing units against the 15.1% 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 $34,458 can pay without cost burden (~$861/mo), and 32% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 25.7% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Low participation: 58.3% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 7.6% between 2019 and 2024, from 9,844 to 9,092.
• Short commutes: 16.7-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 1 institution in Labette County awards 279 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Labette County shows strong potential for fabricated metal product manufacturing attraction, with a 15.47x concentration and 926 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 25.7% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

The concentrated base spans fabricated metal product manufacturing, machinery manufacturing, and nonmetallic mineral product manufacturing, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 47.5% of the employment across them, the largest being goods manufacturing. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.