Montgomery 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 $25,412 (32.9%) 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 $51,941 is worth $53,937 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 20.6%, 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 15.8 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 127 workers (15.9% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $29,530. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 392 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $214M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting averages $64,100 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $15,990, a 4.0x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Forestry and Logging concentrates at 80.03x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 3 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 61% 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.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 2.2x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 76.2% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 17.2% of housing units are vacant, above the Georgia rate of 10.3%, and down from 22% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 27.5% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 5.2% of the vacant stock, or 0.9% of all housing units against the 17.2% headline vacancy rate. Absorbable supply for an incoming employer is thin, 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 $28,158 can pay without cost burden (~$704/mo), and 36.4% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 7% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Succession risk is real: 22.9% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Low participation: 54.4% labor force participation against a labor force that grew 0.9% between 2019 and 2024, so workforce development programs may unlock additional supply.

Montgomery County shows strong potential for forestry and logging attraction, with a 80.03x concentration and 31 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 22.9% 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. Freight and distribution accounts for 61% of it, all of it in merchant wholesalers, nondurable goods. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.