Monroe County, Florida

• Income premium: Households earn well above the national median, supporting strong retail and housing markets.
• Cost of living erodes income: Local prices run 3.4% above the national average, so the nominal median of $87,738 is worth $84,853 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Aging population: Median age of 49 is materially above the U.S. norm; succession planning and senior-services demand are real factors.

• Largest private-sector industry: Accommodation and Food Services employs 16,854 workers (45.1% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $47,505. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 6,219 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $8.3B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $89,588 while Retail Trade averages $43,407, a 2.1x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Scenic and Sightseeing Transportation concentrates at 56.46x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 14 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 75.2% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: visitor economy. Read the count as depth within that single demand base rather than as spread across separate ones.

• Stretched market: Home value to income ratio of 8.9x is well above the ~4.1x national average; attainable workforce housing may be a recruitment friction.
• Elevated vacancy: 37.3% of housing units are vacant, above the Florida rate of 14.7%, and down from 40.1% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 72.2% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 17% of the vacant stock, or 6.3% of all housing units against the 37.3% 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.
• Rent affordability gap: None of the 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $64,941 can pay without cost burden (~$1,624/mo), and 59.8% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 32% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Succession risk is real: 28.2% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Healthy participation: 62.6% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Short commutes: 19.5-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.

Monroe County shows strong potential for scenic and sightseeing transportation attraction, with a 56.46x concentration and 526 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 28.2% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

Most of the employment across the concentrated sub-sectors traces back to a single source of demand. Visitor economy accounts for 75.2% of it, with accommodation the largest single sub-sector at 35.4%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.