Winnebago 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 $2,560 (3.3%) under the Wisconsin median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 7.1% below the national average, so the nominal median of $74,925 is worth $80,651 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.

• Largest private-sector industry: Manufacturing employs 20,050 workers (27.4% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $81,141. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 10,711 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $13.9B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Management of Companies and Enterprises averages $141,305 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $20,417, a 6.9x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Paper Manufacturing concentrates at 20.86x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 14 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 61.7% 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: 7 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.
• Affordable rent tiers: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $45,677 can pay without cost burden (~$1,142/mo), and 39.7% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 65.8% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Short commutes: 19.4-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 1 institution in Winnebago County awards 2,708 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Winnebago County shows strong potential for paper manufacturing attraction, with a 20.86x concentration and 4,556 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. Goods manufacturing accounts for 61.7% of it, with management of companies and enterprises the largest single sub-sector at 18.2%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.