Gentry 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 $14,854 (21.0%) under the Missouri median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 9.2% below the national average, so the nominal median of $55,848 is worth $61,507 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 17.9%, 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 14.1 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 570 workers (37.8% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $39,475. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 470 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $301M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Wholesale Trade averages $97,704 while Retail Trade averages $30,044, a 3.3x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Nursing and Residential Care Facilities concentrates at 7.13x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 5 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 59% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: health care economy. Read the count as depth within that single demand base rather than as spread across separate ones.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 2.4x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 74.4% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 17% of housing units are vacant, above the Missouri rate of 11.2%, and down from 19.9% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 64.6% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 11.1%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 18.5% of the vacant stock, or 3.1% of all housing units against the 17% 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: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $31,226 can pay without cost burden (~$781/mo), and 29.1% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 25.1% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Healthy participation: 60.7% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Gentry County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Gentry County shows strong potential for nursing and residential care facilities attraction, with a 7.13x concentration and 304 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 25.1% 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. Health care economy accounts for 59% of it, with nursing and residential care facilities the largest single sub-sector at 45.4%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.