Story County, Iowa

• Income gap: Households earn meaningfully less than the national median, which directly affects retail demand, housing absorption, and tax base.
• Elevated poverty: At 18.2%, 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 -19.1 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Young population: Median age of 27 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest sector: Retail Trade employs 5,213 workers (18.1% of the top displayed sectors), at an average wage of $32,142.
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $110,766 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $20,282, a 5.5x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Printing and Related Support Activities concentrates at 6.38x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 6 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.

• 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.
• Affordable rent tiers: 4 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom tiers sit below the 30%-of-median-income affordability threshold (~$1,742/mo).

• Strong participation: 81.1% labor force participation among working-age residents indicates an engaged, available workforce.
• Short commutes: 17.8-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 21,768 annual credentials.

Story County shows strong potential for printing and related support activities attraction, with a 6.38x concentration and 697 jobs in this sub-sector, it ranks in the top decile nationally.

The interconnected base across printing and related support activities, machinery manufacturing, and animal production and aquaculture creates supply-chain attraction leverage rather than single-employer risk, a structural advantage for industrial recruitment.

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