Lucas County, Ohio

• 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 $9,165 (12.8%) under the Ohio median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 8.5% below the national average, so the nominal median of $62,224 is worth $68,004 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 17.7%, the rate is in economically distressed territory and supports federal funding narratives (CDFI, NMTC, EDA).
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 6.3 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 38,586 workers (26.2% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $67,538. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 27,184 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $33.4B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Manufacturing averages $94,587 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $22,917, a 4.1x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Petroleum and Coal Products Manufacturing concentrates at 8.80x 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 54.8% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: health care economy. Read the count as depth within that single demand base rather than as spread across separate ones.
• Attraction whitespace: 7 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 2.6x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• Affordable rent tiers: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $38,365 can pay without cost burden (~$959/mo), and 41.7% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 63% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Short commutes: 20.5-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: the 6 largest of 12 institutions in Lucas County award 6,372 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Lucas County shows strong potential for petroleum and coal products manufacturing attraction, with a 8.80x concentration and 1,212 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. Health care economy accounts for 54.8% of it, with hospitals the largest single sub-sector at 33.8%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.