Dickey County, North Dakota

• 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 $8,003 (10.4%) under the North Dakota median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 11.0% below the national average, so the nominal median of $68,654 is worth $77,139 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 6.8 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Construction employs 743 workers (45.6% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $110,983. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 294 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $519M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Construction averages $110,983 while Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation averages $13,450, a 8.3x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Crop Production concentrates at 11.91x 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 58.7% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: construction and real estate cycle. 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 2.4x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 79.7% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 18% of housing units are vacant, above the North Dakota rate of 12.3%, and down from 20.2% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 60% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 17.8%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 18.3% of the vacant stock, or 3.3% of all housing units against the 18% headline vacancy rate. That is the figure to plan an incoming employer's housing against, and the gap between the two is the redevelopment and conversion opportunity.
• Affordable rent tiers: 3 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $43,476 can pay without cost burden (~$1,087/mo), and 27.6% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 23.4% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Healthy participation: 67.4% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Short commutes: 15.8-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 1 institution in Dickey County awards 97 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Dickey County shows strong potential for crop production attraction, with a 11.91x concentration and 104 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 23.4% 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. Construction and real estate cycle accounts for 58.7% of it, with specialty trade contractors the largest single sub-sector at 54.2%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.