Kay County, Oklahoma

• 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 $6,616 (10.2%) under the Oklahoma median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 12.2% below the national average, so the nominal median of $58,423 is worth $66,541 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 16%, 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 16.5 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 2,251 workers (20.2% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $32,851. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 4,158 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $2.3B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Wholesale Trade averages $67,589 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $18,429, a 3.7x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Pipeline Transportation concentrates at 24.48x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 12 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 42.5% of the employment across them, the largest being resident household spending. Demand reaches this base from more than one market rather than from a single one.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 2.1x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• Elevated vacancy: 19.8% of housing units are vacant, above the Oklahoma rate of 12%, and up from 18.2% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 45.2% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 15.8%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 18% of the vacant stock, or 3.6% of all housing units against the 19.8% 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 $43,113 can pay without cost burden (~$1,078/mo), and 35.5% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Low participation: 58.7% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 1% between 2019 and 2024, from 20,183 to 19,988.
• Short commutes: 18.9-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 3 institutions in Kay County award 807 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Kay County shows strong potential for pipeline transportation attraction, with a 24.48x concentration and 132 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans pipeline transportation, support activities for mining, and machinery manufacturing, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 42.5% of the employment across them, the largest being resident household spending. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.