Sanders County, Montana

• Income gap: Households earn meaningfully less than the national median, which directly affects retail demand, housing absorption, and tax base.
• Elevated poverty: At 15.4%, the rate is in distressed-county territory and supports federal funding narratives (CDFI, NMTC, EDA).
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 14.2 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Aging population: Median age of 55 is materially above the U.S. norm; succession planning and senior-services demand are real factors.

• Largest sector: Retail Trade employs 475 workers (25.3% of the top displayed sectors), at an average wage of $29,725.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $552M (2024) with per-capita income of $49,189.
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $79,613 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $25,948, a 3.1x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Forestry and Logging concentrates at 23.85x 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.

• Stretched market: Home value to income ratio of 6.2x is well above the ~4.1x national average; attainable workforce housing may be a recruitment friction.
• High home ownership: 81.3% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 19.9% vacancy rate; potential opportunity for redevelopment or repositioning.
• Affordable rent tiers: 4 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom tiers sit below the 30%-of-median-income affordability threshold (~$1,437/mo).

• Succession risk is real: 33.0% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Talent pipeline: 6 local institutions feed the workforce; the top three combined produce 7,525 annual credentials.

Sanders County shows strong potential for forestry and logging attraction, with a 23.85x concentration and 24 jobs in this sub-sector, it ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 33.0% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

The interconnected base across forestry and logging, wood product manufacturing, and accommodation creates supply-chain attraction leverage rather than single-employer risk, a structural advantage for industrial recruitment.

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