Randolph 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 $48,973 (63.3%) 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 $28,380 is worth $29,470 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 30%, 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 19.3 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Young population: Median age of 35 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest private-sector industry: Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting employs 177 workers (32.5% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $52,466. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 369 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $228M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Real Estate and Rental and Leasing averages $77,298 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $19,310, a 4.0x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Forestry and Logging concentrates at 206.07x 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 88.4% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: resource and agricultural commodities. Read the count as depth within that single demand base rather than as spread across separate ones.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 3.2x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• Elevated vacancy: 23.5% of housing units are vacant, above the Georgia rate of 10.3%, and down from 30.8% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 54.4% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 22.9%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 16.1% of the vacant stock, or 3.8% of all housing units against the 23.5% 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 $21,052 can pay without cost burden (~$526/mo), and 46.7% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 19.2% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Succession risk is real: 29.4% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Low participation: 56.9% labor force participation against a labor force that grew 1.2% between 2019 and 2024, so workforce development programs may unlock additional supply.
• Talent pipeline: 1 institution in Randolph County awards 90 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Randolph County shows strong potential for forestry and logging attraction, with a 206.07x concentration and 99 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 29.4% 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. Resource and agricultural commodities accounts for 88.4% of it, with forestry and logging the largest single sub-sector at 57.6%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.