Montgomery County, Ohio

• 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 $5,250 (7.4%) under the Ohio median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 7.3% below the national average, so the nominal median of $66,139 is worth $71,347 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 15%, the rate is in economically distressed territory and supports federal funding narratives (CDFI, NMTC, EDA).

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 53,247 workers (27.6% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $66,815. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 30,768 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $40.1B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $99,014 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $23,928, a 4.1x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Apparel Manufacturing concentrates at 5.00x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 9 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 49.4% 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.
• Attraction whitespace: 5 sub-sectors register LQ < 0.5 with at least 50 employed, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 2.7x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• Affordable rent tiers: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $43,098 can pay without cost burden (~$1,077/mo), and 44.3% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 63.4% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Short commutes: 21.9-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: the 6 largest of 13 institutions in Montgomery County award 14,658 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Montgomery County shows strong potential for apparel manufacturing attraction, with a 5.00x concentration and 654 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans apparel manufacturing, nonmetallic mineral product manufacturing, and machinery manufacturing, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 49.4% of the employment across them, the largest being health care economy. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.