Grant County, Wisconsin

• 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 $10,627 (13.7%) under the Wisconsin median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 5.9% below the national average, so the nominal median of $66,858 is worth $71,050 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 10.1 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 2,604 workers (22.3% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $53,357. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 3,952 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $3B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $66,873 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $15,503, a 4.3x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Animal Production and Aquaculture concentrates at 18.80x 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 32.1% of the employment across them, the largest being health care economy. Demand reaches this base from more than one market rather than from a single one.
• 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 3.0x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• Vacancy level: 10.6% of housing units are vacant, below the Wisconsin rate of 10.8%, and down from 11.3% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 32% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 17.9% of the vacant stock, or 1.9% of all housing units against the 10.6% 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 $37,820 can pay without cost burden (~$946/mo), and 40.6% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 63.4% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Short commutes: 21.1-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 2 institutions in Grant County award 2,376 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 animal production and aquaculture attraction, with a 18.80x concentration and 502 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans animal production and aquaculture, food manufacturing, and wood product manufacturing, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 32.1% of the employment across them, the largest being health care economy. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.