Arlington County, 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 $142,114 is worth $130,500 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 41.4 pts, supports knowledge-economy and tech attraction.

• Largest private-sector industry: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services employs 49,208 workers (39% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $158,246. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 38,742 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $49.1B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Management of Companies and Enterprises averages $265,020 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $37,517, a 7.1x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Air Transportation concentrates at 15.41x 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, but 68.4% 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 6.3x is well above the ~4.1x national average; attainable workforce housing may be a recruitment friction.
• Renter-majority market: 41.3% 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 $107,656 can pay without cost burden (~$2,691/mo), and 38.8% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Strong participation: 77.3% labor force participation among working-age residents indicates an engaged, available workforce.
• Talent pipeline: 5 institutions in Arlington County award 2,691 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Arlington County shows strong potential for air transportation attraction, with a 15.41x concentration and 9,228 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 68.4% of it, with professional, scientific, and technical services the largest single sub-sector at 61.7%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.