Franklin County, Alabama

• Income gap: Households earn meaningfully less than the national median, which directly affects retail demand, housing absorption, and tax base.
• Below the state median: Median household income runs $10,661 (16.7%) under the Alabama median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 11.2% below the national average, so the nominal median of $53,338 is worth $60,065 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 19.1%, 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 19.9 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Manufacturing employs 4,730 workers (61.8% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $58,115. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 1,982 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $1.3B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction averages $60,679 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $19,198, a 3.2x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Forestry and Logging concentrates at 20.00x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 6 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 54.1% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: goods manufacturing. Read the count as depth within that single demand base rather than as spread across separate ones.
• 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 2.5x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 72.4% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 14.6% of housing units are vacant, above the Alabama rate of 14.5%, and down from 21.4% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 58.8% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 17.8%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 13.6% of the vacant stock, or 2% of all housing units against the 14.6% headline vacancy rate. Absorbable supply for an incoming employer is thin, 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 $31,716 can pay without cost burden (~$793/mo), and 28.9% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Low participation: 57.1% labor force participation against a labor force that grew 5% between 2019 and 2024, so workforce development programs may unlock additional supply.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Franklin County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Franklin County shows strong potential for forestry and logging attraction, with a 20.00x concentration and 62 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

Most of the employment across the concentrated sub-sectors traces back to a single source of demand. Goods manufacturing accounts for 54.1% of it, all of it in fabricated metal product manufacturing. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.