Schoharie 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 $15,841 (18.4%) 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 9.5 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Aging population: Median age of 46 is materially above the U.S. norm; succession planning and senior-services demand are real factors.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 1,063 workers (21.6% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $37,116. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 2,588 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $1.3B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $113,879 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $24,938, a 4.6x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Animal Production and Aquaculture concentrates at 6.44x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 9 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 61.6% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: resident household spending. 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 2.7x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 76.4% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 22.3% of housing units are vacant, above the New York rate of 10%, and down from 28.2% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 67.7% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 6.5% of the vacant stock, or 1.5% of all housing units against the 22.3% 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 $39,321 can pay without cost burden (~$983/mo), and 42% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 22.1% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Succession risk is real: 26.2% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Low participation: 55.4% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 7.5% between 2019 and 2024, from 15,250 to 14,107.
• Talent pipeline: 1 institution in Schoharie County awards 527 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Schoharie County shows strong potential for animal production and aquaculture attraction, with a 6.44x concentration and 71 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 26.2% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

Most of the employment across the concentrated sub-sectors traces back to a single source of demand. Resident household spending accounts for 61.6% of it, with general merchandise retailers the largest single sub-sector at 29.2%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.