Benton County, Oregon

• Income near the national median: Median household income tracks the national median, indicating a broad-based consumer market.
• Below the state median: Median household income runs $5,309 (6.4%) under the Oregon median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living erodes income: Local prices run 4.0% above the national average, so the nominal median of $77,702 is worth $74,713 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 18.2%, the rate is in economically distressed territory and supports federal funding narratives (CDFI, NMTC, EDA).
• Talent advantage: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment exceeds the national average by 18.5 pts, supports knowledge-economy and tech attraction.
• Young population: Median age of 34 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 6,976 workers (29.4% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $74,114. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 10,070 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $6.3B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Manufacturing averages $105,095 while Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation averages $21,307, a 4.9x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Forestry and Logging concentrates at 18.67x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 11 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 42.2% 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.
• Attraction whitespace: 6 sub-sectors register LQ < 0.5 with at least 50 employed, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• Stretched market: Home value to income ratio of 6.6x is well above the ~4.1x national average; attainable workforce housing may be a recruitment friction.
• Rent affordability gap: None of the 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $40,844 can pay without cost burden (~$1,021/mo), and 58% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 36.3% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Healthy participation: 61.1% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Short commutes: 19.6-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 2 institutions in Benton County award 7,983 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Benton County shows strong potential for forestry and logging attraction, with a 18.67x concentration and 183 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans forestry and logging, computer and electronic product manufacturing, and crop production, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 42.2% of the employment across them, the largest being resident household spending. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.