Big Horn County, Montana

• 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 $13,759 (19.0%) under the Montana median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 5.4% below the national average, so the nominal median of $58,750 is worth $62,104 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 22.1%, 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 17.9 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Young population: Median age of 32 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 379 workers (22.9% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $34,198. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 1,790 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $1.3B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction averages $95,725 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $21,213, a 4.5x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Animal Production and Aquaculture concentrates at 26.39x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 6 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 26.1% of the employment across them, the largest being resident household spending. Demand reaches this base from more than one market rather than from a single one.

• 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.
• Elevated vacancy: 15.5% of housing units are vacant, above the Montana rate of 13.2%, and down from 23.7% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 35.9% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 7.9% of the vacant stock, or 1.2% of all housing units against the 15.5% 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 $51,000 can pay without cost burden (~$1,275/mo), and 16.9% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Low participation: 57.2% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 0.5% between 2019 and 2024, from 5,444 to 5,417.
• Short commutes: 19.6-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 1 institution in Big Horn County awards 38 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Big Horn County shows strong potential for animal production and aquaculture attraction, with a 26.39x concentration and 101 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans animal production and aquaculture, utilities, and accommodation, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 26.1% of the employment across them, the largest being resident household spending. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.