Burke 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 $24,339 (31.5%) under the Georgia median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 8.1% below the national average, so the nominal median of $53,014 is worth $57,687 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 18.3%, 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 20.2 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 787 workers (29.6% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $36,024. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 1,530 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $3.9B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $128,205 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $18,859, a 6.8x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Animal Production and Aquaculture concentrates at 6.29x 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, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 45.2% of the employment across them, the largest being freight and distribution. Demand reaches this base from more than one market rather than from a single one.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 2.9x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• Elevated vacancy: 18.7% of housing units are vacant, above the Georgia rate of 10.3%, and up from 18.6% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 58% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 19.1%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 21.8% of the vacant stock, or 4.1% of all housing units against the 18.7% 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.
• Rent affordability gap: None of the 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $30,750 can pay without cost burden (~$769/mo), and 41.2% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 24.7% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Succession risk is real: 23.5% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Low participation: 58.3% labor force participation against a labor force that grew 14.3% between 2019 and 2024, so workforce development programs may unlock additional supply.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Burke County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Burke County shows strong potential for animal production and aquaculture attraction, with a 6.29x concentration and 74 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 23.5% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

The concentrated base spans animal production and aquaculture, wholesale trade agents and brokers, and support activities for agriculture and forestry, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 45.2% of the employment across them, the largest being freight and distribution. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.