Grant County, Washington

• 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 $24,874 (25.3%) under the Washington median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Elevated poverty: At 15.8%, 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 17.3 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Young population: Median age of 34 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest private-sector industry: Manufacturing employs 4,587 workers (19.9% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $74,745. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 8,883 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $8.6B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $146,621 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $25,760, a 5.7x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Crop Production concentrates at 49.77x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 9 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 67.5% 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.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 4.1x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• Elevated vacancy: 12% of housing units are vacant, above the Washington rate of 7.3%, and down from 17.8% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 60% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 15.1% of the vacant stock, or 1.8% of all housing units against the 12% 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: 3 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $51,315 can pay without cost burden (~$1,283/mo), and 37.6% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 62.3% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Short commutes: 20.2-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 1 institution in Grant County awards 630 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Grant County shows strong potential for crop production attraction, with a 49.77x concentration and 6,975 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 67.5% of it, with crop production the largest single sub-sector at 50.5%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.