Spalding 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 $15,282 (19.8%) under the Georgia median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Elevated poverty: At 18.9%, 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 17.2 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 4,443 workers (25.2% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $56,317. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 5,150 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $3.1B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Wholesale Trade averages $73,736 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $21,842, a 3.4x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Plastics and Rubber Products Manufacturing concentrates at 6.92x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 10 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 49.9% of the employment across them, the largest being health care economy. 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 3.7x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• Rent affordability gap: None of the 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $37,386 can pay without cost burden (~$935/mo), and 47.7% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 22.3% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Low participation: 56.7% labor force participation against a labor force that grew 10.1% between 2019 and 2024, so workforce development programs may unlock additional supply.
• Talent pipeline: 1 institution in Spalding County awards 3,906 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Spalding County shows strong potential for plastics and rubber products manufacturing attraction, with a 6.92x concentration and 669 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans plastics and rubber products manufacturing, paper manufacturing, and machinery manufacturing, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 49.9% of the employment across them, the largest being health care economy. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.