St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana

• Income near the national median: Median household income tracks the national median, indicating a broad-based consumer market.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 7.3% below the national average, so the nominal median of $81,202 is worth $87,597 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 15,683 workers (21.8% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $57,950. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 15,280 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $17.4B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Wholesale Trade averages $108,186 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $22,479, a 4.8x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Oil and Gas Extraction concentrates at 5.58x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 11 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 70.8% 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.

• 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.
• High home ownership: 78.9% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Affordable rent tiers: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $47,790 can pay without cost burden (~$1,195/mo), and 47.9% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 23.2% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Healthy participation: 62.9% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Talent pipeline: 5 institutions in St. Tammany Parish award 3,723 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

St. Tammany Parish shows strong potential for oil and gas extraction attraction, with a 5.58x concentration and 405 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 23.2% 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 70.8% of it, with food services and drinking places the largest single sub-sector at 61.3%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.