Wyandotte 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 $10,644 (14.3%) under the Kansas median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 7.5% below the national average, so the nominal median of $63,631 is worth $68,790 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 15.8%, 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 14.5 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Young population: Median age of 34 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 16,396 workers (23.7% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $87,177. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 14,860 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $15.5B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Construction averages $91,061 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $26,598, a 3.4x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Warehousing and Storage concentrates at 5.67x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 11 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 52.3% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: freight and distribution. Read the count as depth within that single demand base rather than as spread across separate ones.
• Attraction whitespace: 6 sub-sectors register LQ < 0.5 with at least 50 employed, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 2.7x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• Elevated vacancy: 10.5% of housing units are vacant, above the Kansas rate of 9.2%, and down from 11.7% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 67.7% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 3.7%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 23% of the vacant stock, or 2.4% of all housing units against the 10.5% 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: 1 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $44,875 can pay without cost burden (~$1,122/mo), and 44.7% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 66.5% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Talent pipeline: 2 institutions in Wyandotte County award 1,258 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Wyandotte County shows strong potential for warehousing and storage attraction, with a 5.67x concentration and 6,378 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

Most of the employment across the concentrated sub-sectors traces back to a single source of demand. Freight and distribution accounts for 52.3% of it, with warehousing and storage the largest single sub-sector at 32.8%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.