Fallon County, Montana

• 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 5.4% below the national average, so the nominal median of $76,250 is worth $80,603 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 19.5 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction employs 198 workers (27.6% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $105,485. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 269 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $224M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction averages $105,485 while Other Services (except Public Administration) averages $22,264, a 4.7x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Heavy and Civil Engineering Construction concentrates at 6.44x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 4 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 37.8% of the employment across them, the largest being freight and distribution. Demand reaches this base from more than one market rather than from a single one.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 3.2x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• Elevated vacancy: 20.6% of housing units are vacant, above the Montana rate of 13.2%, and up from 13% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 43.3% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 21.3% of the vacant stock, or 4.4% of all housing units against the 20.6% 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: 3 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $65,000 can pay without cost burden (~$1,625/mo), and 6.1% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Low participation: 58.2% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 21.2% between 2019 and 2024, from 1,592 to 1,254.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Fallon County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Fallon County shows strong potential for heavy and civil engineering construction attraction, with a 6.44x concentration and 55 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans heavy and civil engineering construction, truck transportation, and animal production and aquaculture, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 37.8% of the employment across them, the largest being freight and distribution. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.