Gallatin County, Montana

• Income premium: Households earn well above the national median, supporting strong retail and housing markets.
• Talent advantage: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment exceeds the national average by 18.6 pts, supports knowledge-economy and tech attraction.
• Young population: Median age of 34 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest private-sector industry: Accommodation and Food Services employs 12,123 workers (21.3% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $42,683. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 9,035 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $11.9B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $144,779 while Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation averages $32,969, a 4.4x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Accommodation concentrates at 5.55x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 16 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 33.8% of the employment across them, the largest being visitor economy. Demand reaches this base from more than one market rather than from a single one.
• Attraction whitespace: 6 sub-sectors register LQ < 0.5 with at least 50 employed, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• Stretched market: Home value to income ratio of 7.1x is well above the ~4.1x national average; attainable workforce housing may be a recruitment friction.
• Vacancy level: 11% of housing units are vacant, below the Montana rate of 13.2%, and down from 11.5% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 49.2% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 25.2% of the vacant stock, or 2.8% of all housing units against the 11% headline vacancy rate. Absorbable supply for an incoming employer is thin, 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 $68,740 can pay without cost burden (~$1,718/mo), and 45.2% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 71.2% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Short commutes: 18.3-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 2 institutions in Gallatin County award 3,557 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Gallatin County shows strong potential for accommodation attraction, with a 5.55x concentration and 5,216 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans accommodation, lessors of nonfinancial intangible assets, and crop production, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 33.8% of the employment across them, the largest being visitor economy. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.