Montgomery County, Kentucky

• Income gap: Households earn meaningfully less than the national median, which directly affects retail demand, housing absorption, and tax base.
• Below the state median: Median household income runs $7,330 (11.5%) under the Kentucky median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 9.8% below the national average, so the nominal median of $56,396 is worth $62,523 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 15.4%, the rate is in economically distressed territory and supports federal funding narratives (CDFI, NMTC, EDA).
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 14.8 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Manufacturing employs 3,202 workers (44.5% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $56,154. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 1,241 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $1.4B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $64,478 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $20,148, a 3.2x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Plastics and Rubber Products Manufacturing concentrates at 8.63x 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, but 50.5% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: goods manufacturing. Read the count as depth within that single demand base rather than as spread across separate ones.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 3.1x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• Affordable rent tiers: 3 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $41,278 can pay without cost burden (~$1,032/mo), and 23.6% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Low participation: 58.1% labor force participation against a labor force that grew 6.7% between 2019 and 2024, so workforce development programs may unlock additional supply.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Montgomery County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Montgomery County shows strong potential for plastics and rubber products manufacturing attraction, with a 8.63x concentration and 433 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. Goods manufacturing accounts for 50.5% of it, with transportation equipment manufacturing the largest single sub-sector at 32.9%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.