Hudson County, New Jersey

• Income premium: Households earn well above the national median, supporting strong retail and housing markets.
• Below the state median: Median household income runs $11,761 (11.4%) under the New Jersey median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living erodes income: Local prices run 12.6% above the national average, so the nominal median of $91,795 is worth $81,523 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 14.9%, 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 13.2 pts, supports knowledge-economy and tech attraction.

• Largest private-sector industry: Finance and Insurance employs 37,224 workers (19.5% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $222,052. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 39,014 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $65.7B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $222,052 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $35,548, a 6.2x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Securities, Commodity Contracts, Investments concentrates at 6.84x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 12 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 50% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: finance and insurance. Read the count as depth within that single demand base rather than as spread across separate ones.
• Attraction whitespace: 7 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 5.9x is well above the ~4.1x national average; attainable workforce housing may be a recruitment friction.
• Renter-majority market: 30.7% owner-occupied; flexible labor mobility but consider home-buying pipeline if attracting families.
• Rent affordability gap: None of the 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $75,879 can pay without cost burden (~$1,897/mo), and 44.6% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 22.5% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Healthy participation: 70.3% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Talent pipeline: the 6 largest of 8 institutions in Hudson County award 7,140 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Hudson County shows strong potential for securities, commodity contracts, investments attraction, with a 6.84x concentration and 13,198 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. Finance and insurance accounts for 50% of it, with credit intermediation and related activities the largest single sub-sector at 29%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.