Williamsburg city, Virginia

• Income near the national median: Median household income tracks the national median, indicating a broad-based consumer market.
• Below the state median: Median household income runs $17,566 (18.9%) under the Virginia median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Elevated poverty: At 18.8%, the rate is in economically distressed territory and supports federal funding narratives (CDFI, NMTC, EDA).
• Talent advantage: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment exceeds the national average by 10.1 pts, supports knowledge-economy and tech attraction.
• Young population: Median age of 24 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 1,054 workers (36% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $34,459. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 4,268 and is counted separately.
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $190,025 while Other Services (except Public Administration) averages $34,065, a 5.6x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Food Services and Drinking Places concentrates at 3.32x the national norm, strong concentration that anchors the local economy and supports supply-chain attraction strategy.
• Cluster depth: 5 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 68.8% 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.

• Stretched market: Home value to income ratio of 5.7x is well above the ~4.1x national average; attainable workforce housing may be a recruitment friction.
• Elevated vacancy: 13.4% of housing units are vacant, above the Virginia rate of 8.7%, and up from 10.6% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 45.4% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 37.7% of the vacant stock, or 5.1% of all housing units against the 13.4% headline vacancy rate. That is the figure to plan an incoming employer's housing against, and the gap between the two is the redevelopment and conversion opportunity.
• Rent affordability gap: None of the 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $43,094 can pay without cost burden (~$1,077/mo), and 61.5% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 42.6% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Low participation: 48.7% labor force participation against a labor force that grew 2% between 2019 and 2024, so workforce development programs may unlock additional supply.
• Short commutes: 19.5-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.

Williamsburg city shows meaningful potential for food services and drinking places attraction, with a 3.32x concentration and 2,568 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 68.8% 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.