Grand Forks 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 $8,582 (11.2%) under the North Dakota median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 13.3% below the national average, so the nominal median of $68,075 is worth $78,518 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Young population: Median age of 31 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 6,973 workers (24.5% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $70,566. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 8,454 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $5.9B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $91,681 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $23,567, a 3.9x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Machinery Manufacturing concentrates at 2.57x the national norm.
• Cluster depth: 9 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 51.5% 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.
• Attraction whitespace: 3 sub-sectors register LQ < 0.5 with at least 50 employed, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 3.7x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• Affordable rent tiers: 3 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $46,237 can pay without cost burden (~$1,156/mo), and 43.2% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 71.1% 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: 2 institutions in Grand Forks County award 3,483 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Grand Forks County shows emerging potential for machinery manufacturing attraction, with a 2.57x concentration and 691 jobs in this sub-sector.

Most of the employment across the concentrated sub-sectors traces back to a single source of demand. Resident household spending accounts for 51.5% of it, with nursing and residential care facilities the largest single sub-sector at 21.4%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.