Orleans Parish, Louisiana

• 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 $4,125 (6.8%) under the Louisiana median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 7.4% below the national average, so the nominal median of $56,631 is worth $61,157 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 22.6%, the rate is in economically distressed territory and supports federal funding narratives (CDFI, NMTC, EDA).
• Talent advantage: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment exceeds the national average by 6.7 pts, supports knowledge-economy and tech attraction.

• Largest private-sector industry: Accommodation and Food Services employs 36,360 workers (26.2% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $36,853. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 27,495 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $30.8B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $145,630 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $36,853, a 4.0x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Scenic and Sightseeing Transportation concentrates at 11.69x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 8 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 66.3% 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.
• Attraction whitespace: 6 sub-sectors register LQ < 0.5 with at least 50 employed, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• Stretched market: Home value to income ratio of 5.6x is well above the ~4.1x national average; attainable workforce housing may be a recruitment friction.
• Elevated vacancy: 20.3% of housing units are vacant, above the Louisiana rate of 14.4%, and up from 19.8% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 52.5% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 21%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 22.3% of the vacant stock, or 4.5% of all housing units against the 20.3% 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 $35,372 can pay without cost burden (~$884/mo), and 54.2% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 32.1% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Healthy participation: 60.7% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Talent pipeline: the 6 largest of 14 institutions in Orleans Parish award 11,828 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Orleans Parish shows strong potential for scenic and sightseeing transportation attraction, with a 11.69x concentration and 424 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. Visitor economy accounts for 66.3% of it, with food services and drinking places the largest single sub-sector at 42.3%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.