Queen Anne's 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 $112,826 is worth $107,967 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Aging population: Median age of 45 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 2,563 workers (21% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $28,461. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 2,749 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $2.9B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Wholesale Trade averages $120,069 while Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation averages $26,912, a 4.5x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Fishing, Hunting and Trapping concentrates at 6.34x 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 51.6% 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: 3 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 4.1x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• High home ownership: 82.9% 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 $60,684 can pay without cost burden (~$1,517/mo), and 50% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 27.8% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Healthy participation: 67.6% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Talent pipeline: 1 institution in Queen Anne's County awards 231 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Queen Anne's County shows strong potential for fishing, hunting and trapping attraction, with a 6.34x concentration and 5 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 27.8% 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 51.6% of it, with food services and drinking places the largest single sub-sector at 43.9%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.