Orleans County, New York

• 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 $20,005 (23.3%) under the New York median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 17.8 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Aging population: Median age of 44 is materially above the U.S. norm; succession planning and senior-services demand are real factors.

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 1,479 workers (20% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $44,903. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 3,451 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $1.9B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Manufacturing averages $73,274 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $22,964, a 3.2x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Crop Production concentrates at 17.75x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 12 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 30.9% of the employment across them, the largest being resource and agricultural commodities. Demand reaches this base from more than one market rather than from a single one.
• 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 2.1x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 77.2% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 11.5% of housing units are vacant, above the New York rate of 10%, and up from 10.9% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 43% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 10.2% of the vacant stock, or 1.2% of all housing units against the 11.5% headline vacancy rate. Absorbable supply for an incoming employer is thin, and the gap between the two is the redevelopment and conversion opportunity.
• Rent affordability gap: None of the 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $38,613 can pay without cost burden (~$965/mo), and 36.4% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 23.5% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Succession risk is real: 26.4% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Low participation: 57.1% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 0.2% between 2019 and 2024, from 18,870 to 18,826.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Orleans County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Orleans County shows strong potential for crop production attraction, with a 17.75x concentration and 563 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 26.4% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

The concentrated base spans crop production, support activities for agriculture and forestry, and transit and ground passenger transportation, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 30.9% of the employment across them, the largest being resource and agricultural commodities. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.