Coffee County, Alabama

• Income gap: Households earn meaningfully less than the national median, which directly affects retail demand, housing absorption, and tax base.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 11.2% below the national average, so the nominal median of $68,353 is worth $76,974 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 16.7%, the rate is in economically distressed territory and supports federal funding narratives (CDFI, NMTC, EDA).
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 13.2 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Manufacturing employs 3,791 workers (30% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $49,845. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 2,834 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $2.3B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Wholesale Trade averages $76,209 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $20,101, a 3.8x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Support Activities for Agriculture and Forestry concentrates at 6.97x 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, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 42.2% of the employment across them, the largest being resident household spending. Demand reaches this base from more than one market rather than from a single one.
• Attraction whitespace: 3 sub-sectors register LQ < 0.5 with at least 50 employed, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 2.8x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 72.3% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 14.9% of housing units are vacant, above the Alabama rate of 14.5%, and up from 14.1% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 50.3% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 7.1%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 28.9% of the vacant stock, or 4.3% of all housing units against the 14.9% 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.
• Affordable rent tiers: 3 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $45,779 can pay without cost burden (~$1,144/mo), and 32.5% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Low participation: 57.1% labor force participation against a labor force that grew 1.7% between 2019 and 2024, so workforce development programs may unlock additional supply.
• Talent pipeline: 1 institution in Coffee County awards 447 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Coffee County shows strong potential for support activities for agriculture and forestry attraction, with a 6.97x concentration and 298 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans support activities for agriculture and forestry, plastics and rubber products manufacturing, and transportation equipment manufacturing, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 42.2% of the employment across them, the largest being resident household spending. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.