Carbon 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 $5,665 (7.4%) 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 $70,511 is worth $76,064 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 11.3 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 727 workers (22.5% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $36,450. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 1,756 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $1.9B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Manufacturing averages $131,331 while Retail Trade averages $36,450, a 3.6x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Pipeline Transportation concentrates at 22.25x 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, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 41.1% of the employment across them, the largest being visitor economy. 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 3.2x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• High home ownership: 76.3% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 25.7% of housing units are vacant, above the Wyoming rate of 12.2%, and down from 29.5% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 49.9% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 23% of the vacant stock, or 5.9% of all housing units against the 25.7% 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: 3 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $48,667 can pay without cost burden (~$1,217/mo), and 25.3% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Low participation: 58.9% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 9.7% between 2019 and 2024, from 7,519 to 6,791.
• Short commutes: 16.4-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 Carbon County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Carbon County shows strong potential for pipeline transportation attraction, with a 22.25x concentration and 44 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans pipeline transportation, animal production and aquaculture, and accommodation, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 41.1% of the employment across them, the largest being visitor economy. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.