Norton 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 $20,225 (27.2%) 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 $54,050 is worth $59,989 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 13.2 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Manufacturing employs 242 workers (31.4% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $72,417. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 756 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $357M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $74,136 while Wholesale Trade averages $31,136, a 2.4x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Animal Production and Aquaculture concentrates at 8.14x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 8 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 41.8% of the employment across them, the largest being health care economy. Demand reaches this base from more than one market rather than from a single one.

• 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.
• High home ownership: 76.2% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 18.4% of housing units are vacant, above the Kansas rate of 9.2%, and down from 28% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 68% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 4.4%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 12.7% of the vacant stock, or 2.3% of all housing units against the 18.4% 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: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $31,859 can pay without cost burden (~$796/mo), and 29.8% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Low participation: 46% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 14.9% between 2019 and 2024, from 2,379 to 2,025.
• Short commutes: 11.0-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 Norton County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Norton County shows strong potential for animal production and aquaculture attraction, with a 8.14x concentration and 26 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans animal production and aquaculture, crop production, and furniture, home furnishings, and other retailers, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 41.8% of the employment across them, the largest being health care economy. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.