Worcester County, Massachusetts

• Income premium: Households earn well above the national median, supporting strong retail and housing markets.
• Below the state median: Median household income runs $8,021 (7.7%) under the Massachusetts median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 74,559 workers (28.6% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $69,846. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 54,854 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $60.9B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $126,809 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $30,356, a 4.2x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Leather and Allied Product Manufacturing concentrates at 4.34x the national norm, strong concentration that anchors the local economy and supports supply-chain attraction strategy.
• Cluster depth: 16 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 56.8% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: health care economy. Read the count as depth within that single demand base rather than as spread across separate ones.
• Attraction whitespace: 5 sub-sectors register LQ < 0.5 with at least 50 employed and clear the local siting screen on energy cost, freight access and land base, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 4.4x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• Rent affordability gap: None of the 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $52,395 can pay without cost burden (~$1,310/mo), and 47.9% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 23.6% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Succession risk is real: 22.8% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Healthy participation: 66.5% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Talent pipeline: the 6 largest of 18 institutions in Worcester County award 9,073 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Worcester County shows meaningful potential for leather and allied product manufacturing attraction, with a 4.34x concentration and 233 jobs in this sub-sector. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 22.8% 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. Health care economy accounts for 56.8% of it, with hospitals the largest single sub-sector at 21.5%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.