Ben Hill County, Georgia

• 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 $35,595 (46.0%) under the Georgia median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 3.7% below the national average, so the nominal median of $41,758 is worth $43,362 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 25.2%, 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 22.7 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Manufacturing employs 1,665 workers (44.8% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $57,078. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 995 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $821M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Wholesale Trade averages $76,245 while Other Services (except Public Administration) averages $31,386, a 2.4x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Wood Product Manufacturing concentrates at 30.73x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 5 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 82.8% 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 2.7x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• Elevated vacancy: 13% of housing units are vacant, above the Georgia rate of 10.3%, and down from 19.5% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 36.1% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 35.7% of the vacant stock, or 4.6% of all housing units against the 13% 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 $35,848 can pay without cost burden (~$896/mo), and 33.4% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 22.4% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Low participation: 55.1% labor force participation against a labor force that grew 12.7% between 2019 and 2024, so workforce development programs may unlock additional supply.
• Short commutes: 16.8-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Ben Hill County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Ben Hill County shows strong potential for wood product manufacturing attraction, with a 30.73x concentration and 433 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 22.4% 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. Goods manufacturing accounts for 82.8% of it, with transportation equipment manufacturing the largest single sub-sector at 42.4%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.