Queens County, New York

• Income near the national median: Median household income tracks the national median, indicating a broad-based consumer market.
• Cost of living erodes income: Local prices run 12.6% above the national average, so the nominal median of $86,136 is worth $76,497 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 203,702 workers (36.5% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $55,322. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 123,180 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $143.1B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Construction averages $96,559 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $36,959, a 2.6x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Air Transportation concentrates at 12.20x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 10 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 56.7% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: health care economy. Read the count as depth within that single demand base rather than as spread across separate ones.
• Attraction whitespace: 4 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 8.4x is well above the ~4.1x national average; attainable workforce housing may be a recruitment friction.
• Renter-majority market: 44.9% 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 $72,003 can pay without cost burden (~$1,800/mo), and 50.1% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 26.6% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Healthy participation: 63.2% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Talent pipeline: the 6 largest of 27 institutions in Queens County award 15,619 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Queens County shows strong potential for air transportation attraction, with a 12.20x concentration and 32,924 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. Health care economy accounts for 56.7% of it, with ambulatory health care services the largest single sub-sector at 31.5%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.