St. Louis city, Missouri

• 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 $14,542 (20.6%) under the Missouri median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 4.9% below the national average, so the nominal median of $56,160 is worth $59,054 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 20.6%, 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 5.4 pts, supports knowledge-economy and tech attraction.

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 53,564 workers (32.3% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $80,320. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 25,819 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $40.4B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $123,409 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $31,497, a 3.9x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Beverage and Tobacco Product Manufacturing concentrates at 5.06x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 10 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 50.8% 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: 8 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 3.5x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• Renter-majority market: 45.3% owner-occupied; flexible labor mobility but consider home-buying pipeline if attracting families.
• Elevated vacancy: 16.8% of housing units are vacant, above the Missouri rate of 11.2%, and down from 19.7% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 56.9% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 2.8%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 27.6% of the vacant stock, or 4.6% of all housing units against the 16.8% 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.
• Affordable rent tiers: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $40,752 can pay without cost burden (~$1,019/mo), and 43.1% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 66.5% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Talent pipeline: the 6 largest of 10 institutions in St. Louis city award 5,145 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. Louis city shows strong potential for beverage and tobacco product manufacturing attraction, with a 5.06x concentration and 2,493 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. Health care economy accounts for 50.8% of it, with hospitals the largest single sub-sector at 38.1%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.