Colfax County, Nebraska

• Income near the national median: Median household income tracks the national median, indicating a broad-based consumer market.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 9.9% below the national average, so the nominal median of $82,530 is worth $91,598 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 20.9 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Wholesale Trade employs 352 workers (36.5% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $64,355. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 736 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $1B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Wholesale Trade averages $64,355 while Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation averages $14,875, a 4.3x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Animal Production and Aquaculture concentrates at 26.05x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 4 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 56.5% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: freight and distribution. 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 1.8x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 76.3% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Affordable rent tiers: 4 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $57,882 can pay without cost burden (~$1,447/mo), and 13.7% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 70% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Short commutes: 17.4-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Colfax County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Colfax County shows strong potential for animal production and aquaculture attraction, with a 26.05x concentration and 232 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. Freight and distribution accounts for 56.5% of it, with merchant wholesalers, nondurable goods the largest single sub-sector at 39.2%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.