Scott County, Minnesota

• Income premium: Households earn well above the national median, supporting strong retail and housing markets.
• Cost of living erodes income: Local prices run 4.8% above the national average, so the nominal median of $119,314 is worth $113,849 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Talent advantage: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment exceeds the national average by 8.4 pts, supports knowledge-economy and tech attraction.

• Largest private-sector industry: Transportation and Warehousing employs 9,964 workers (19.9% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $47,994. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 10,084 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $11B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Wholesale Trade averages $103,450 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $25,531, a 4.1x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Printing and Related Support Activities concentrates at 6.79x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 12 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 35.7% of the employment across them, the largest being construction and real estate cycle. Demand reaches this base from more than one market rather than from a single one.
• Attraction whitespace: 4 sub-sectors register LQ < 0.5 with at least 50 employed, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 3.5x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• High home ownership: 83.8% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Affordable rent tiers: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $57,685 can pay without cost burden (~$1,442/mo), and 49.6% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 74.8% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Scott County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Scott County shows strong potential for printing and related support activities attraction, with a 6.79x concentration and 944 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans printing and related support activities, computer and electronic product manufacturing, and textile product mills, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 35.7% of the employment across them, the largest being construction and real estate cycle. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.