Crisp 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 $32,248 (41.7%) 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 $45,105 is worth $46,838 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 23.3%, 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 20.4 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 1,416 workers (35.6% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $37,983. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 1,300 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $1.4B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Construction averages $72,862 while Administrative and Support and Waste Management averages $32,544, a 2.2x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Forestry and Logging concentrates at 13.49x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 8 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 42.2% of the employment across them, the largest being resident household spending. Demand reaches this base from more than one market rather than from a single one.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 3.1x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• Elevated vacancy: 20.2% of housing units are vacant, above the Georgia rate of 10.3%, and down from 20.5% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 37% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 17.8% of the vacant stock, or 3.6% of all housing units against the 20.2% 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 $26,178 can pay without cost burden (~$654/mo), and 43% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 30.6% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Succession risk is real: 23.7% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Low participation: 55.9% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 13.8% between 2019 and 2024, from 10,232 to 8,820.
• Short commutes: 20.6-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 Crisp County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Crisp County shows strong potential for forestry and logging attraction, with a 13.49x concentration and 33 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 23.7% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

The concentrated base spans forestry and logging, wood product manufacturing, and building material and garden supply retailers, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 42.2% of the employment across them, the largest being resident household spending. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.