Anne Arundel County, Maryland

• Income premium: Households earn well above the national median, supporting strong retail and housing markets.
• Cost of living erodes income: Local prices run 4.5% above the national average, so the nominal median of $124,911 is worth $119,532 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 10.1 pts, supports knowledge-economy and tech attraction.

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 37,407 workers (17% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $72,837. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 50,600 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $69.9B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Manufacturing averages $136,432 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $31,255, a 4.4x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Air Transportation concentrates at 5.72x 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 67.4% 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: 6 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 3.7x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• High home ownership: 75.1% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Affordable rent tiers: 3 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $83,319 can pay without cost burden (~$2,083/mo), and 45% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 69.4% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Talent pipeline: the 6 largest of 7 institutions in Anne Arundel County award 4,107 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Anne Arundel County shows strong potential for air transportation attraction, with a 5.72x concentration and 5,957 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 67.4% 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.