Tompkins County, New York

• 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 $11,950 (13.9%) under the New York median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living erodes income: Local prices run 3.3% above the national average, so the nominal median of $74,024 is worth $71,659 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 16.4%, 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 23.1 pts, supports knowledge-economy and tech attraction.
• Young population: Median age of 32 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 4,240 workers (23.6% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $38,777. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 5,941 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $8B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $104,083 while Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation averages $25,478, a 4.1x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Transit and Ground Passenger Transportation concentrates at 3.85x the national norm, strong concentration that anchors the local economy and supports supply-chain attraction strategy.
• Cluster depth: 5 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 43.3% of the employment across them, the largest being health care economy. Demand reaches this base from more than one market rather than from a single one.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 3.9x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor 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 $44,517 can pay without cost burden (~$1,113/mo), and 53.5% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 30.9% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Low participation: 58.4% labor force participation against a labor force that grew 1.1% between 2019 and 2024, so workforce development programs may unlock additional supply.
• Short commutes: 20.1-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 3 institutions in Tompkins County award 10,758 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Tompkins County shows meaningful potential for transit and ground passenger transportation attraction, with a 3.85x concentration and 682 jobs in this sub-sector.

The concentrated base spans transit and ground passenger transportation, animal production and aquaculture, and transportation equipment manufacturing, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 43.3% of the employment across them, the largest being health care economy. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.