York County, Virginia

• Income premium: Households earn well above the national median, supporting strong retail and housing markets.
• Talent advantage: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment exceeds the national average by 14.3 pts, supports knowledge-economy and tech attraction.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 3,444 workers (21% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $36,629. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 4,436 and is counted separately.
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $92,406 while Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation averages $21,805, a 4.2x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Electrical Equipment, Appliance Manufacturing concentrates at 5.22x 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 53.6% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: resident household spending. Read the count as depth within that single demand base rather than as spread across separate ones.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 3.9x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• High home ownership: 71.6% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Affordable rent tiers: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $66,657 can pay without cost burden (~$1,666/mo), and 46.8% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 22.1% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Healthy participation: 66.4% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in York County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

York County shows strong potential for electrical equipment, appliance manufacturing attraction, with a 5.22x concentration and 307 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 22.1% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

Most of the employment across the concentrated sub-sectors traces back to a single source of demand. Resident household spending accounts for 53.6% of it, with general merchandise retailers the largest single sub-sector at 23.2%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.