Harrison County, West Virginia

• Income gap: Households earn meaningfully less than the national median, which directly affects retail demand, housing absorption, and tax base.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 10.5% below the national average, so the nominal median of $60,377 is worth $67,460 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 14.4%, 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 8.5 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Aging population: Median age of 43 is materially above the U.S. norm; succession planning and senior-services demand are real factors.

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 6,521 workers (26.1% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $68,409. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 8,500 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $6B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction averages $113,349 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $24,062, a 4.7x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Support Activities for Mining concentrates at 9.74x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 13 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 25.3% of the employment across them, the largest being freight and distribution. Demand reaches this base from more than one market rather than from a single one.
• Attraction whitespace: 5 sub-sectors register LQ < 0.5 with at least 50 employed, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 2.8x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 73.6% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Vacancy level: 13.7% of housing units are vacant, below the West Virginia rate of 15.4%, and down from 14.5% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 51% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 4.8%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 38.1% of the vacant stock, or 5.2% of all housing units against the 13.7% 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 $34,862 can pay without cost burden (~$872/mo), and 40.3% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 23.9% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Low participation: 56.2% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 8.1% between 2019 and 2024, from 32,274 to 29,668.
• Talent pipeline: 3 institutions in Harrison County award 397 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Harrison County shows strong potential for support activities for mining attraction, with a 9.74x concentration and 562 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 23.9% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

The concentrated base spans support activities for mining, pipeline transportation, and support activities for transportation, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 25.3% of the employment across them, the largest being freight and distribution. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.