Madison County, Alabama

• Income premium: Households earn well above the national median, supporting strong retail and housing markets.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 6.9% below the national average, so the nominal median of $86,499 is worth $92,910 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Talent advantage: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment exceeds the national average by 10.7 pts, supports knowledge-economy and tech attraction.

• Largest private-sector industry: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services employs 44,770 workers (26.4% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $124,924. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 49,786 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $39B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $124,924 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $24,282, a 5.1x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Transportation Equipment Manufacturing concentrates at 6.25x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 5 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 67.8% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: business and professional services. Read the count as depth within that single demand base rather than as spread across separate ones.
• Attraction whitespace: 7 sub-sectors register LQ < 0.5 with at least 50 employed, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• 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.
• Affordable rent tiers: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $51,833 can pay without cost burden (~$1,296/mo), and 41.5% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 64.8% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Talent pipeline: the 6 largest of 7 institutions in Madison County award 3,637 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Madison County shows strong potential for transportation equipment manufacturing attraction, with a 6.25x concentration and 15,118 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

Most of the employment across the concentrated sub-sectors traces back to a single source of demand. Business and professional services accounts for 67.8% of it, all of it in professional, scientific, and technical services. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.