Glacier County, Montana

• 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 $25,634 (35.4%) under the Montana median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 5.4% below the national average, so the nominal median of $46,875 is worth $49,551 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 31.1%, the rate is in economically distressed territory and supports federal funding narratives (CDFI, NMTC, EDA).
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 19.2 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Young population: Median age of 33 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest private-sector industry: Accommodation and Food Services employs 453 workers (30.5% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $28,594. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 2,489 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $650M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Utilities averages $89,110 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $28,594, a 3.1x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Pipeline Transportation concentrates at 14.01x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 9 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 53.2% 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.

• 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.
• Elevated vacancy: 19.8% of housing units are vacant, above the Montana rate of 13.2%, and down from 22.9% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 47.1% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 7% of the vacant stock, or 1.4% of all housing units against the 19.8% headline vacancy rate. Absorbable supply for an incoming employer is thin, and the gap between the two is the redevelopment and conversion opportunity.
• Rent affordability gap: None of the 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $31,161 can pay without cost burden (~$779/mo), and 36.5% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 19.2% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Low participation: 55.5% labor force participation against a labor force that grew 2.2% between 2019 and 2024, so workforce development programs may unlock additional supply.
• Short commutes: 14.7-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 1 institution in Glacier County awards 64 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Glacier County shows strong potential for pipeline transportation attraction, with a 14.01x concentration and 10 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. Visitor economy accounts for 53.2% of it, with food services and drinking places the largest single sub-sector at 30.2%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.