Buchanan County, Missouri

• 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 $8,544 (12.1%) under the Missouri median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 13.6% below the national average, so the nominal median of $62,158 is worth $71,942 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 16%, 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 11.8 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Manufacturing employs 11,858 workers (31.7% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $72,900. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 5,711 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $6.7B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Construction averages $90,775 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $22,474, a 4.0x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Food Manufacturing concentrates at 9.76x 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, but 70.5% 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: 4 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: 13.1% of housing units are vacant, above the Missouri rate of 11.2%, and down from 13.5% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 63.2% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 5.3%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 20.2% of the vacant stock, or 2.6% of all housing units against the 13.1% 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 $35,271 can pay without cost burden (~$882/mo), and 46.3% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 60.7% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Short commutes: 17.8-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 1 institution in Buchanan County awards 814 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Buchanan County shows strong potential for food manufacturing attraction, with a 9.76x concentration and 5,218 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. Goods manufacturing accounts for 70.5% of it, with food manufacturing the largest single sub-sector at 38.8%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.