Rockland 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 $109,959 is worth $97,655 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 16.2%, 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 7.0 pts, supports knowledge-economy and tech attraction.
• Young population: Median age of 35 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 34,342 workers (32.6% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $49,833. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 17,362 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $24.4B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $96,966 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $32,330, a 3.0x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Transit and Ground Passenger Transportation concentrates at 6.19x 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 60.8% 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: 3 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 5.4x is well above the ~4.1x national average; attainable workforce housing may be a recruitment friction.
• Rent affordability gap: None of the 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $55,338 can pay without cost burden (~$1,383/mo), and 58.6% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 35.8% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Healthy participation: 62.9% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Talent pipeline: the 6 largest of 17 institutions in Rockland County award 2,186 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Rockland County shows strong potential for transit and ground passenger transportation attraction, with a 6.19x concentration and 3,070 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 60.8% of it, with ambulatory health care services the largest single sub-sector at 33.5%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.