Mississippi 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 $8,225 (13.5%) under the Arkansas median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 13.1% below the national average, so the nominal median of $52,548 is worth $60,470 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 21.1%, 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 22.0 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Manufacturing employs 6,885 workers (43.4% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $103,965. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 2,454 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $4.2B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Manufacturing averages $103,965 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $19,516, a 5.3x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Primary Metal Manufacturing concentrates at 88.80x 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 81.2% 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: 6 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 2.3x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• Elevated vacancy: 19.2% of housing units are vacant, above the Arkansas rate of 13.5%, and down from 20.3% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 71.8% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 2.6%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 20.5% of the vacant stock, or 3.9% of all housing units against the 19.2% 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 $27,276 can pay without cost burden (~$682/mo), and 43.8% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 22.1% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Low participation: 59.3% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 6.5% between 2019 and 2024, from 19,129 to 17,890.
• Short commutes: 19.8-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.

Mississippi County shows strong potential for primary metal manufacturing attraction, with a 88.80x concentration and 4,368 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 22.1% 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. Goods manufacturing accounts for 81.2% of it, with primary metal manufacturing the largest single sub-sector at 69.3%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.