Polk County, Florida

• 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 $8,590 (11.5%) under the Florida median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Elevated poverty: At 14.5%, 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 12.2 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 36,166 workers (17.8% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $63,972. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 29,637 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $44.3B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $81,164 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $26,662, a 3.0x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Warehousing and Storage concentrates at 5.91x 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, but 60.1% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: freight and distribution. 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.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 4.0x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• High home ownership: 70.5% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 15.1% of housing units are vacant, above the Florida rate of 14.7%, and down from 20.4% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 56.8% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 15.2% of the vacant stock, or 2.3% of all housing units against the 15.1% 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: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $50,423 can pay without cost burden (~$1,261/mo), and 49.8% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Low participation: 58% labor force participation against a labor force that grew 21.6% between 2019 and 2024, so workforce development programs may unlock additional supply.
• Talent pipeline: the 6 largest of 11 institutions in Polk County award 5,952 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Polk County shows strong potential for warehousing and storage attraction, with a 5.91x concentration and 19,862 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. Freight and distribution accounts for 60.1% of it, with warehousing and storage the largest single sub-sector at 44.3%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.