Garfield County, Oklahoma

• 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 15.7% below the national average, so the nominal median of $66,182 is worth $78,508 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 12.4 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 3,337 workers (19.4% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $52,519. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 3,499 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $3.9B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $79,017 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $20,651, a 3.8x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Support Activities for Mining concentrates at 13.29x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 10 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 44.4% of the employment across them, the largest being goods manufacturing. Demand reaches this base from more than one market rather than from a single one.

• 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.
• Elevated vacancy: 14.1% of housing units are vacant, above the Oklahoma rate of 12%, and up from 12.2% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is sold but not yet occupied at 59.5% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 12.6%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 24.3% of the vacant stock, or 3.4% of all housing units against the 14.1% 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 $41,605 can pay without cost burden (~$1,040/mo), and 38.6% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 64.8% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Short commutes: 17.6-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 2 institutions in Garfield County award 276 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Garfield County shows strong potential for support activities for mining attraction, with a 13.29x concentration and 527 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans support activities for mining, food manufacturing, and museums, historical sites, and similar, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 44.4% of the employment across them, the largest being goods manufacturing. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.