St. Croix County, Wisconsin

• Income premium: Households earn well above the national median, supporting strong retail and housing markets.
• Cost of living erodes income: Local prices run 4.8% above the national average, so the nominal median of $103,046 is worth $98,326 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.

• Largest private-sector industry: Manufacturing employs 6,809 workers (22.8% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $70,341. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 4,618 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $6B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $96,727 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $20,676, a 4.7x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Plastics and Rubber Products Manufacturing concentrates at 9.10x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 12 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 61.3% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: goods manufacturing. 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.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 3.7x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• High home ownership: 78.3% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Affordable rent tiers: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $64,348 can pay without cost burden (~$1,609/mo), and 32.8% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 23.6% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Healthy participation: 69% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in St. Croix County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

St. Croix County shows strong potential for plastics and rubber products manufacturing attraction, with a 9.10x concentration and 1,568 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 23.6% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

Most of the employment across the concentrated sub-sectors traces back to a single source of demand. Goods manufacturing accounts for 61.3% of it, with plastics and rubber products manufacturing the largest single sub-sector at 19.8%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.