Little River County, Arkansas

• 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 $7,429 (12.2%) under the Arkansas median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 16.0% below the national average, so the nominal median of $53,344 is worth $63,505 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 15.5%, 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 18.5 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Aging population: Median age of 43 is materially above the U.S. norm; succession planning and senior-services demand are real factors.

• Largest private-sector industry: Manufacturing employs 910 workers (47.1% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $105,342. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 782 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $715M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Manufacturing averages $105,342 while Retail Trade averages $32,580, a 3.2x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Truck Transportation concentrates at 6.87x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 4 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 55.4% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: resident household spending. Read the count as depth within that single demand base rather than as spread across separate ones.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 2.1x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 80.1% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 20.4% of housing units are vacant, above the Arkansas rate of 13.5%, and up from 17.6% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 65.9% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 10.4%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 20.9% of the vacant stock, or 4.3% of all housing units against the 20.4% 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: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $33,487 can pay without cost burden (~$837/mo), and 32.2% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 24.4% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Low participation: 55.9% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 2.8% between 2019 and 2024, from 5,459 to 5,304.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Little River County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Little River County shows strong potential for truck transportation attraction, with a 6.87x concentration and 180 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 24.4% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

Most of the employment across the concentrated sub-sectors traces back to a single source of demand. Resident household spending accounts for 55.4% of it, with truck transportation the largest single sub-sector at 40.7%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.