Sumter 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 $34,700 (44.9%) 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 $42,653 is worth $44,292 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 23.7%, 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 14.3 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 1,220 workers (25.3% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $31,159. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 2,176 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $1.3B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $73,519 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $20,451, a 3.6x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Support Activities for Agriculture and Forestry concentrates at 6.74x 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 47.1% 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.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 2.8x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• Elevated vacancy: 18.7% of housing units are vacant, above the Georgia rate of 10.3%, and up from 17.1% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 25% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 16.3% of the vacant stock, or 3% of all housing units against the 18.7% 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 $32,327 can pay without cost burden (~$808/mo), and 41.5% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 18.5% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Low participation: 57.3% labor force participation against a labor force that grew 2.7% between 2019 and 2024, so workforce development programs may unlock additional supply.
• Short commutes: 19.9-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 2 institutions in Sumter County award 2,070 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Sumter County shows strong potential for support activities for agriculture and forestry attraction, with a 6.74x concentration and 144 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans support activities for agriculture and forestry, crop production, and truck transportation, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 47.1% of the employment across them, the largest being resident household spending. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.