New York County, New York

• Income premium: Households earn well above the national median, supporting strong retail and housing markets.
• Cost of living erodes income: Local prices run 12.6% above the national average, so the nominal median of $103,931 is worth $92,301 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 16.5%, 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 28.5 pts, supports knowledge-economy and tech attraction.

• Largest private-sector industry: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services employs 370,061 workers (19% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $210,581. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 231,886 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $1,006.7B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $454,713 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $56,855, a 8.0x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Securities, Commodity Contracts, Investments concentrates at 10.49x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 19 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 34.8% of the employment across them, the largest being business and professional services. 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 and clear the local siting screen on energy cost, freight access and land base, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• Stretched market: Home value to income ratio of 10.5x is well above the ~4.1x national average; attainable workforce housing may be a recruitment friction.
• Renter-majority market: 25.1% owner-occupied; flexible labor mobility but consider home-buying pipeline if attracting families.
• Elevated vacancy: 15.7% of housing units are vacant, above the New York rate of 10%, and up from 13.7% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 33.5% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 29.5% of the vacant stock, or 4.6% of all housing units against the 15.7% 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.
• Rent affordability gap: None of the 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $84,783 can pay without cost burden (~$2,120/mo), and 45.9% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 24.2% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Healthy participation: 66.5% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Talent pipeline: the 6 largest of 49 institutions in New York County award 52,950 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

New York County shows strong potential for securities, commodity contracts, investments attraction, with a 10.49x concentration and 196,184 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans securities, commodity contracts, investments, internet publishing and broadcasting, and web search portals, libraries, and archives, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 34.8% of the employment across them, the largest being business and professional services. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.