Okfuskee 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 $16,676 (25.6%) 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 $48,363 is worth $55,083 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 25.8%, 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 21.4 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 418 workers (38% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $29,327. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 1,145 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $304M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Administrative and Support and Waste Management averages $77,126 while Retail Trade averages $27,060, a 2.9x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Nursing and Residential Care Facilities concentrates at 6.75x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 3 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 71.5% 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.

• 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: 16.4% of housing units are vacant, above the Oklahoma rate of 12%, and down from 25.8% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 58.2% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 22.2%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 12% of the vacant stock, or 2% of all housing units against the 16.4% headline vacancy rate. Absorbable supply for an incoming employer is thin, and the gap between the two is the redevelopment and conversion opportunity.
• Affordable rent tiers: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $33,023 can pay without cost burden (~$826/mo), and 27.5% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 22.1% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Low participation: 44.8% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 5.3% between 2019 and 2024, from 4,269 to 4,041.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Okfuskee County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Okfuskee County shows strong potential for nursing and residential care facilities attraction, with a 6.75x concentration and 228 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 22.1% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

Most of the employment across the concentrated sub-sectors traces back to a single source of demand. Health care economy accounts for 71.5% of it, all of it in nursing and residential care facilities. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.