Ray County, Missouri

• 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 7.5% below the national average, so the nominal median of $74,573 is worth $80,619 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 19.5 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Aging population: Median age of 42 is materially above the U.S. norm; succession planning and senior-services demand are real factors.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 581 workers (26.4% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $31,314. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 1,278 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $651M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $76,604 while Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation averages $16,534, a 4.6x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: General Merchandise Retailers concentrates at 4.92x the national norm, strong concentration that anchors the local economy and supports supply-chain attraction strategy.
• Cluster depth: 7 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 76% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: resident household spending. 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 2.7x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 77.3% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Rent affordability gap: None of the 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $37,194 can pay without cost burden (~$930/mo), and 37% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 15.7% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Succession risk is real: 26.5% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Healthy participation: 60.5% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Ray County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Ray County shows meaningful potential for general merchandise retailers attraction, with a 4.92x concentration and 329 jobs in this sub-sector. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 26.5% 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. Resident household spending accounts for 76% of it, with general merchandise retailers the largest single sub-sector at 51.6%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.