Carbon County, Utah

• 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 $36,789 (38.7%) under the Utah median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Elevated poverty: At 17%, 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 16.9 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 1,082 workers (25.2% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $32,058. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 2,148 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $1.3B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Wholesale Trade averages $71,847 while Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation averages $11,452, a 6.3x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Repair and Maintenance concentrates at 3.70x the national norm, strong concentration that anchors the local economy and supports supply-chain attraction strategy.
• Cluster depth: 8 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 48.2% 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.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 3.9x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• Elevated vacancy: 16% of housing units are vacant, above the Utah rate of 8.1%, and down from 20.3% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 40.1% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 21% of the vacant stock, or 3.4% of all housing units against the 16% 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: 1 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $32,261 can pay without cost burden (~$807/mo), and 45.4% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Low participation: 56.7% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 2.9% between 2019 and 2024, from 9,339 to 9,066.
• Short commutes: 19.5-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Carbon County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Carbon County shows meaningful potential for repair and maintenance attraction, with a 3.70x concentration and 265 jobs in this sub-sector.

The concentrated base spans repair and maintenance, truck transportation, and waste management and remediation services, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 48.2% of the employment across them, the largest being resident household spending. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.