Lewis and Clark County, Montana

• Talent advantage: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment exceeds the national average by 7.3 pts, supports knowledge-economy and tech attraction.
• Aging population: Median age of 42 is materially above the U.S. norm; succession planning and senior-services demand are real factors.

• Largest sector: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 5,702 workers (23.6% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $63,729.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $5.7B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $122,231 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $24,588, a 5.0x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Religious, Grantmaking, Civic, Professional Orgs concentrates at 3.40x the national norm, strong concentration that anchors the local economy and supports supply-chain attraction strategy.
• Cluster depth: 4 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.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 5.0x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• High home ownership: 70.1% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Affordable rent tiers: 3 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom tiers sit below the 30%-of-median-income affordability threshold (~$1,956/mo).

• Succession risk is real: 23.8% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• 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.

Lewis and Clark County shows meaningful potential for religious, grantmaking, civic, professional orgs attraction, with a 3.40x concentration and 1,239 jobs in this sub-sector. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 23.8% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

The interconnected base across religious, grantmaking, civic, professional orgs, sporting goods, hobby, musical instrument, book, and misc. retailers, and animal production and aquaculture creates supply-chain attraction leverage rather than single-employer risk, a structural advantage for industrial recruitment.