Big Horn County, Wyoming

• 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 $14,075 (18.5%) under the Wyoming median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 7.3% below the national average, so the nominal median of $62,101 is worth $66,991 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 12.9 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Aging population: Median age of 42 is materially above the U.S. norm; succession planning and senior-services demand are real factors.

• Largest private-sector industry: Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction employs 543 workers (24.1% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $73,738. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 1,447 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $768M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction averages $73,738 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $17,243, a 4.3x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Crop Production concentrates at 8.75x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 8 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 22.2% of the employment across them, the largest being construction and real estate cycle. Demand reaches this base from more than one market rather than from a single one.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 3.5x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• High home ownership: 75.9% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 17% of housing units are vacant, above the Wyoming rate of 12.2%, and down from 18.2% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 59.3% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 15.1%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 20% of the vacant stock, or 3.4% of all housing units against the 17% 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: 3 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $43,145 can pay without cost burden (~$1,079/mo), and 33.9% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 25.1% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Low participation: 58.5% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 0.8% between 2019 and 2024, from 5,498 to 5,453.
• Short commutes: 18.7-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Big Horn County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Big Horn County shows strong potential for crop production attraction, with a 8.75x concentration and 100 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 25.1% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

The concentrated base spans crop production, heavy and civil engineering construction, and food manufacturing, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 22.2% of the employment across them, the largest being construction and real estate cycle. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.