Brookings County, South Dakota

• 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 $5,017 (6.7%) under the South Dakota median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 11.4% below the national average, so the nominal median of $70,064 is worth $79,079 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Talent advantage: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment exceeds the national average by 6.8 pts, supports knowledge-economy and tech attraction.
• Young population: Median age of 28 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest private-sector industry: Manufacturing employs 4,298 workers (32.5% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $78,749. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 4,540 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $3.1B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Wholesale Trade averages $105,903 while Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation averages $18,054, a 5.9x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Animal Production and Aquaculture concentrates at 11.25x 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, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 41.4% 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: 3 sub-sectors register LQ < 0.5 with at least 50 employed, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 3.8x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• Affordable rent tiers: 3 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $47,102 can pay without cost burden (~$1,178/mo), and 36.2% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 69% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Short commutes: 14.3-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 1 institution in Brookings County awards 2,703 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Brookings County shows strong potential for animal production and aquaculture attraction, with a 11.25x concentration and 343 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans animal production and aquaculture, food manufacturing, and gasoline stations and fuel dealers, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 41.4% of the employment across them, the largest being resident household spending. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.