Peach 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 $6,060 (7.8%) under the Georgia median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 6.2% below the national average, so the nominal median of $71,293 is worth $76,005 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 17.3%, 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 12.9 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Manufacturing employs 2,597 workers (35.6% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $85,279. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 1,983 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $1.3B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Manufacturing averages $85,279 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $19,045, a 4.5x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Crop Production concentrates at 18.69x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 6 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 58.5% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: resident household spending. 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 2.9x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• Elevated vacancy: 13.5% of housing units are vacant, above the Georgia rate of 10.3%, and up from 13% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 63.2% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 9.1%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 18.6% of the vacant stock, or 2.5% of all housing units against the 13.5% 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 $35,163 can pay without cost burden (~$879/mo), and 42% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 18.2% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Succession risk is real: 22.2% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Healthy participation: 61.2% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Talent pipeline: 1 institution in Peach County awards 416 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Peach County shows strong potential for crop production attraction, with a 18.69x concentration and 653 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 22.2% 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. Resident household spending accounts for 58.5% of it, with gasoline stations and fuel dealers the largest single sub-sector at 32.2%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.