Coffee 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 $26,670 (34.5%) 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 $50,683 is worth $52,630 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 23.1%, 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 21.8 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Manufacturing employs 3,748 workers (30.2% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $53,465. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 2,764 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $2.3B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Wholesale Trade averages $75,343 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $19,226, a 3.9x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Wood Product Manufacturing concentrates at 13.53x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 12 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 42.7% of the employment across them, the largest being goods manufacturing. Demand reaches this base from more than one market rather than from a single one.
• 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 2.5x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• Elevated vacancy: 12.3% of housing units are vacant, above the Georgia rate of 10.3%, and down from 16.5% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 59.5% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 11.6%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 25.3% of the vacant stock, or 3.1% of all housing units against the 12.3% 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 $26,899 can pay without cost burden (~$672/mo), and 33.8% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 16.1% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Low participation: 53.6% labor force participation against a labor force that grew 2.8% between 2019 and 2024, so workforce development programs may unlock additional supply.
• Short commutes: 18.7-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 1 institution in Coffee County awards 374 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Coffee County shows strong potential for wood product manufacturing attraction, with a 13.53x concentration and 636 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans wood product manufacturing, forestry and logging, and support activities for agriculture and forestry, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 42.7% of the employment across them, the largest being goods manufacturing. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.