Alexandria city, Virginia

• Income premium: Households earn well above the national median, supporting strong retail and housing markets.
• Cost of living erodes income: Local prices run 8.9% above the national average, so the nominal median of $119,681 is worth $109,900 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Talent advantage: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment exceeds the national average by 30.5 pts, supports knowledge-economy and tech attraction.

• Largest private-sector industry: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services employs 13,246 workers (22.9% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $141,976. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 17,010 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $18B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $166,070 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $33,955, a 4.9x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Religious, Grantmaking, Civic, Professional Orgs concentrates at 8.30x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 5 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 57.8% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: business and professional services. 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, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• Stretched market: Home value to income ratio of 6.1x is well above the ~4.1x national average; attainable workforce housing may be a recruitment friction.
• Renter-majority market: 42.1% owner-occupied; flexible labor mobility but consider home-buying pipeline if attracting families.
• Affordable rent tiers: 3 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $90,542 can pay without cost burden (~$2,264/mo), and 44.4% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Strong participation: 78.3% labor force participation among working-age residents indicates an engaged, available workforce.

Alexandria city shows strong potential for religious, grantmaking, civic, professional orgs attraction, with a 8.30x concentration and 5,780 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. Business and professional services accounts for 57.8% of it, all of it in professional, scientific, and technical services. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.