Saline 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 $12,771 (18.1%) 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 $57,931 is worth $63,801 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 16.4%, 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 13.0 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Young population: Median age of 35 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest private-sector industry: Manufacturing employs 2,129 workers (41.7% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $58,754. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 1,615 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $1.3B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Wholesale Trade averages $68,130 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $16,834, a 4.0x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Food Manufacturing concentrates at 16.01x 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 51.9% 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: 3 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.
• Elevated vacancy: 17.9% of housing units are vacant, above the Missouri rate of 11.2%, and down from 18.8% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 85.5% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 6.1%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 6.1% of the vacant stock, or 1.1% of all housing units against the 17.9% 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: 3 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $36,250 can pay without cost burden (~$906/mo), and 45.4% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Low participation: 58.5% labor force participation against a labor force that grew 1.5% between 2019 and 2024, so workforce development programs may unlock additional supply.
• Short commutes: 17.5-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 2 institutions in Saline County award 283 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Saline County shows strong potential for food manufacturing attraction, with a 16.01x concentration and 1,540 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 51.9% of it, with food manufacturing the largest single sub-sector at 43%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.