Iron 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 $28,919 (30.4%) under the Utah median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Young population: Median age of 30 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest private-sector industry: Construction employs 3,262 workers (17.8% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $61,957. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 5,251 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $3.2B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $89,132 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $20,077, a 4.4x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Mining (except Oil and Gas) concentrates at 5.01x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 10 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 52.4% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: construction and real estate cycle. Read the count as depth within that single demand base rather than as spread across separate ones.
• 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 5.7x is well above the ~4.1x national average; attainable workforce housing may be a recruitment friction.
• Elevated vacancy: 14.4% of housing units are vacant, above the Utah rate of 8.1%, and down from 19.9% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 59.3% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 21.9% of the vacant stock, or 3.2% of all housing units against the 14.4% 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: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $40,123 can pay without cost burden (~$1,003/mo), and 51.5% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 64.2% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Short commutes: 16.9-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.

Iron County shows strong potential for mining (except oil and gas) attraction, with a 5.01x concentration and 146 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

Most of the employment across the concentrated sub-sectors traces back to a single source of demand. Construction and real estate cycle accounts for 52.4% of it, with specialty trade contractors the largest single sub-sector at 30.3%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.