Daviess County, Kentucky

• Income gap: Households earn meaningfully less than the national median, which directly affects retail demand, housing absorption, and tax base.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 11.4% below the national average, so the nominal median of $68,214 is worth $76,991 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 14.7%, 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 9.5 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 9,346 workers (24% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $63,507. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 5,310 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $6.2B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $84,000 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $21,459, a 3.9x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Pipeline Transportation concentrates at 27.62x 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, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 46.2% 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.
• Attraction whitespace: 5 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 2.9x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• Affordable rent tiers: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $38,971 can pay without cost burden (~$974/mo), and 36.9% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 22.2% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Healthy participation: 62% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Short commutes: 19.3-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 4 institutions in Daviess County award 3,233 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Daviess County shows strong potential for pipeline transportation attraction, with a 27.62x concentration and 495 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 22.2% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

The concentrated base spans pipeline transportation, beverage and tobacco product manufacturing, and food manufacturing, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 46.2% of the employment across them, the largest being goods manufacturing. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.