Calhoun County, Michigan

• 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 $9,698 (13.3%) under the Michigan median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 9.5% below the national average, so the nominal median of $63,177 is worth $69,809 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 12.8 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Manufacturing employs 10,032 workers (25% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $81,197. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 10,691 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $9.1B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $159,188 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $24,686, a 6.4x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Transportation Equipment Manufacturing concentrates at 8.47x 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, but 53.3% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: goods manufacturing. Read the count as depth within that single demand base rather than as spread across separate ones.
• 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 2.6x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 72.7% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Vacancy level: 10.5% of housing units are vacant, below the Michigan rate of 11.8%, and down from 11.3% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 41.9% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 14.9%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 35.5% of the vacant stock, or 3.7% of all housing units against the 10.5% 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: 1 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $37,537 can pay without cost burden (~$938/mo), and 45.6% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 22.7% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Low participation: 59.6% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 0.6% between 2019 and 2024, from 64,143 to 63,774.
• Short commutes: 20.5-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 4 institutions in Calhoun County award 1,273 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Calhoun County shows strong potential for transportation equipment manufacturing attraction, with a 8.47x concentration and 4,888 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 22.7% 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. Goods manufacturing accounts for 53.3% of it, with transportation equipment manufacturing the largest single sub-sector at 31.4%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.