Staunton 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 $27,589 (29.6%) under the Virginia median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 8.9% below the national average, so the nominal median of $65,581 is worth $71,988 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 1,619 workers (21.8% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $43,514. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 2,799 and is counted separately.
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $92,230 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $24,666, a 3.7x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Nursing and Residential Care Facilities concentrates at 2.77x the national norm.
• Cluster depth: 10 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 29.9% of the employment across them, the largest being visitor 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 4.0x 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 $41,888 can pay without cost burden (~$1,047/mo), and 43% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 21.7% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Low participation: 59.6% labor force participation against a labor force that grew 1.8% between 2019 and 2024, so workforce development programs may unlock additional supply.
• Short commutes: 20.5-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 2 institutions in Staunton city award 610 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Staunton city shows emerging potential for nursing and residential care facilities attraction, with a 2.77x concentration and 598 jobs in this sub-sector.

The concentrated base spans nursing and residential care facilities, educational services, and religious, grantmaking, civic, professional orgs, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 29.9% of the employment across them, the largest being visitor economy. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.