Hampton city, Virginia

• 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 $23,549 (25.3%) under the Virginia median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 7.2 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 6,524 workers (20.6% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $60,769. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 14,839 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $9.2B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $93,714 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $23,306, a 4.0x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Support Activities for Transportation concentrates at 2.65x the national norm.
• Cluster depth: 5 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 61.5% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: visitor 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, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 3.5x 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 $49,261 can pay without cost burden (~$1,232/mo), and 55.2% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 29.6% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Healthy participation: 65.2% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Talent pipeline: 2 institutions in Hampton city award 2,022 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Hampton city shows emerging potential for support activities for transportation attraction, with a 2.65x concentration and 577 jobs in this sub-sector.

Most of the employment across the concentrated sub-sectors traces back to a single source of demand. Visitor economy accounts for 61.5% of it, all of it in food services and drinking places. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.