Latah County, Idaho

• Income gap: Households earn meaningfully less than the national median, which directly affects retail demand, housing absorption, and tax base.
• Elevated poverty: At 17.6%, the rate is in distressed-county territory and supports federal funding narratives (CDFI, NMTC, EDA).
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by -7.3 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Young population: Median age of 31 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest sector: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 2,121 workers (23.7% of the top displayed sectors), at an average wage of $47,221.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $2.1B (2024) with per-capita income of $55,988.
• Wage stratification: Wholesale Trade averages $76,446 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $20,464, a 3.7x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Forestry and Logging concentrates at 33.90x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 7 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, suggesting an interconnected industrial base rather than reliance on a single employer or sector.
• Attraction whitespace: 8 sub-sectors register LQ < 0.5, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• Stretched market: Home value to income ratio of 5.6x is well above the ~4.1x national average; attainable workforce housing may be a recruitment friction.
• Affordable rent tiers: 4 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom tiers sit below the 30%-of-median-income affordability threshold (~$1,636/mo).

• Strong participation: 78.3% labor force participation among working-age residents indicates an engaged, available workforce.
• Short commutes: 18.7-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 6 local institutions feed the workforce; the top three combined produce 17,074 annual credentials.

Latah County shows strong potential for forestry and logging attraction, with a 33.90x concentration and 152 jobs in this sub-sector, it ranks in the top decile nationally.

The interconnected base across forestry and logging, wood product manufacturing, and sporting goods, hobby, musical instrument, book, and misc. retailers creates supply-chain attraction leverage rather than single-employer risk, a structural advantage for industrial recruitment.

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