Mineral 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 $9,059 (12.5%) under the Montana median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 3.6% below the national average, so the nominal median of $63,450 is worth $65,820 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 9.6 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Aging population: Median age of 50 is materially above the U.S. norm; succession planning and senior-services demand are real factors.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 285 workers (42% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $34,418. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 362 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $164M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $116,285 while Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation averages $19,519, a 6.0x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Gasoline Stations and Fuel Dealers concentrates at 23.02x 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, but 69% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: resident household spending. Read the count as depth within that single demand base rather than as spread across separate ones.

• Stretched market: Home value to income ratio of 5.7x is well above the ~4.1x national average; attainable workforce housing may be a recruitment friction.
• High home ownership: 81.1% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 16.4% of housing units are vacant, above the Montana rate of 13.2%, and down from 28.7% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 42.7% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 13% of the vacant stock, or 2.1% of all housing units against the 16.4% 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 $33,148 can pay without cost burden (~$829/mo), and 44.6% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 20.2% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Succession risk is real: 32.2% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Low participation: 53.2% labor force participation against a labor force that grew 25.4% between 2019 and 2024, so workforce development programs may unlock additional supply.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Mineral County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Mineral County shows strong potential for gasoline stations and fuel dealers attraction, with a 23.02x concentration and 157 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 32.2% 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. Resident household spending accounts for 69% of it, with gasoline stations and fuel dealers the largest single sub-sector at 47.3%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.