Economic studies for Bannock County, built on the county's own numbers

What the numbers show

Bannock County runs on roughly 36,700 covered jobs across about 3,070 establishments, at an average annual wage near $45,600, below the national average in the pattern typical of a regional college and government town. Health care is the largest employer at close to 6,900 jobs, followed by education, retail, and hospitality. The concentration that defines the county is education, which employs people here at about 1.6 times the national rate, the weight of Idaho State University in a city this size. Public administration and health care also run above the national rate, roughly 1.3 and 1.2 times, the signature of a hub that serves a wide rural region from Pocatello.

The Bannock County economy

Bannock County's economy is built around Pocatello: Idaho State University, a regional health care system, and the government and retail functions that serve southeastern Idaho. Union Pacific's rail yards have made the city a freight and logistics point for generations, and food processing and light manufacturing round out the traded base. The university and the public sector give the county a steadier employment floor than a purely rural county carries, while the productive work stays in the plants, the rail corridor, and the health system.

A new manufacturing tenant, a university-linked research or housing project, a rail-served distribution facility, or a downtown Pocatello redevelopment all turn on the same two questions: what the project genuinely returns to the county, and whether it pencils under southeastern Idaho's real wage and market conditions.

A project we could put through the engine here

The live subject a study here has to reckon with is the future of the large semiconductor fabrication plant on Pocatello's west side, the former ON Semiconductor site later operated by LA Semiconductor, which entered receivership and moved to wind down operations, putting hundreds of skilled manufacturing jobs and more than half a million square feet of specialized plant in question. What that facility becomes, whether a working fab under a new owner, a converted industrial site, or something else, is a real economic question for the county, and measuring the jobs, wages, and supplier activity at stake, separated from what the wider economy would carry anyway, is exactly the kind of work the engine is built for.

Public-data path: regional input-output multipliers, free-data regionalized or drawn from a purchased BEA RIMS II order where a project supplies one, BLS QCEW and Census LODES for the local labor base, Idaho Department of Labor wage and industry series for southeastern Idaho, and the public filings and receivership record where a specific plant's payroll and footprint are on the record.

What we do for Bannock County

We produce the study first: economic impact (what a project brings to Bannock County, in jobs, output, and tax revenue, with local leakage handled honestly), feasibility and viability (whether it should move forward, measured with the finance a lender runs), and fiscal impact for public budgets and grant applications. Every engagement returns a full report, a one-page brief, a reviewer pack, and a decision package.

And if a study is already in hand, we review it: we inventory its quotable claims, attach the evidence, and tell you plainly what survives review before you quote it or fund against it. More on reading a study before you rely on it.

Local, and grounded in the record

National firms fly in, bill the travel, and price a county like Bannock out of the analysis it needs. We work across the interior West, we can be on-site, and we build every study on the county's measured federal record, the same BLS and Census data behind the numbers above, so the result traces to a public source and survives scrutiny.

← All locations