Wayne County, Nebraska

• 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 $10,260 (13.4%) under the Nebraska median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 9.9% below the national average, so the nominal median of $66,215 is worth $73,491 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 5.3 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Young population: Median age of 30 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest private-sector industry: Manufacturing employs 819 workers (33.6% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $56,463. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 1,248 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $804M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Wholesale Trade averages $67,540 while Retail Trade averages $22,706, a 3.0x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Animal Production and Aquaculture concentrates at 14.85x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 8 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 40.7% 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.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 3.3x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• Affordable rent tiers: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $37,583 can pay without cost burden (~$940/mo), and 43.9% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 67.3% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Short commutes: 13.4-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 1 institution in Wayne County awards 990 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Wayne County shows strong potential for animal production and aquaculture attraction, with a 14.85x concentration and 88 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans animal production and aquaculture, gasoline stations and fuel dealers, and fabricated metal product manufacturing, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 40.7% of the employment across them, the largest being resident household spending. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.