Sebastian 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 $2,983 (4.9%) under the Arkansas median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 14.1% below the national average, so the nominal median of $57,790 is worth $67,276 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 16%, 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 12.4 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Manufacturing employs 12,789 workers (23.6% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $63,128. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 7,161 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $9.3B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $79,067 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $23,020, a 3.4x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Electrical Equipment, Appliance Manufacturing concentrates at 8.59x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 13 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 55% 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: 5 sub-sectors register LQ < 0.5 with at least 50 employed, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 3.0x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• Affordable rent tiers: 3 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $40,047 can pay without cost burden (~$1,001/mo), and 39.5% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 60.6% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Short commutes: 19.3-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 4 institutions in Sebastian County award 1,679 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Sebastian County shows strong potential for electrical equipment, appliance manufacturing attraction, with a 8.59x concentration and 1,691 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 55% of it, with food manufacturing the largest single sub-sector at 22.2%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.