Douglas County, Washington

• 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 $17,778 (18.1%) under the Washington median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 14.2 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 1,883 workers (26.6% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $47,052. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 2,362 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $2.8B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Wholesale Trade averages $70,926 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $28,902, a 2.5x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Crop Production concentrates at 45.58x 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, but 50.9% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: resource and agricultural commodities. Read the count as depth within that single demand base rather than as spread across separate ones.
• Attraction whitespace: 3 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 5.4x is well above the ~4.1x national average; attainable workforce housing may be a recruitment friction.
• Elevated vacancy: 11.3% of housing units are vacant, above the Washington rate of 7.3%, and up from 10.2% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 62.3% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 10.9% of the vacant stock, or 1.2% of all housing units against the 11.3% 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 $56,142 can pay without cost burden (~$1,404/mo), and 38.4% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 63.1% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Short commutes: 20.1-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 Douglas County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Douglas County shows strong potential for crop production attraction, with a 45.58x concentration and 1,830 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. Resource and agricultural commodities accounts for 50.9% of it, with crop production the largest single sub-sector at 38.3%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.