Gallatin County, Montana

• 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 18.6 pts, supports knowledge-economy and tech attraction.
• Young population: Median age of 34 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest sector: Accommodation and Food Services employs 12,128 workers (21.3% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $42,678.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $11.9B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $144,778 while Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation averages $32,969, a 4.4x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Accommodation concentrates at 5.70x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 10 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, suggesting an interconnected industrial base rather than reliance on a single employer or sector.
• Attraction whitespace: 8 sub-sectors register LQ < 0.5, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• Stretched market: Home value to income ratio of 7.1x is well above the ~4.1x national average; attainable workforce housing may be a recruitment friction.
• Elevated vacancy: 11% vacancy rate. In resort, rural, and seasonal markets much of this is recreational/seasonal (second homes), not available supply; confirm the vacancy-by-reason split before treating it as a redevelopment opportunity.
• Affordable rent tiers: 3 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom tiers sit below the 30%-of-median-income affordability threshold (~$2,338/mo).

• Short commutes: 18.3-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 6 regional institutions feed the workforce; the top three combined produce 7,525 annual credentials.

Gallatin County shows strong potential for accommodation attraction, with a 5.70x concentration and 5,216 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The interconnected base across accommodation, lessors of nonfinancial intangible assets, and crop production creates supply-chain attraction leverage rather than single-employer risk, a structural advantage for industrial recruitment.