Hancock County, Ohio

• Income gap: Households earn meaningfully less than the national median, which directly affects retail demand, housing absorption, and tax base.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 7.2% below the national average, so the nominal median of $73,141 is worth $78,816 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 5.4 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Manufacturing employs 10,707 workers (28.9% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $64,950. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 3,362 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $7.3B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Management of Companies and Enterprises averages $260,473 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $21,965, a 11.9x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Plastics and Rubber Products Manufacturing concentrates at 9.52x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 7 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 56.1% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: goods manufacturing. 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 2.8x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 70.8% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Affordable rent tiers: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $44,377 can pay without cost burden (~$1,109/mo), and 34.8% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 64.1% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Short commutes: 18.0-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 2 institutions in Hancock County award 858 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Hancock County shows strong potential for plastics and rubber products manufacturing attraction, with a 9.52x concentration and 2,107 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

Most of the employment across the concentrated sub-sectors traces back to a single source of demand. Goods manufacturing accounts for 56.1% of it, with transportation equipment manufacturing the largest single sub-sector at 19.3%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.