Thomas 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 $16,617 (21.5%) 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 $60,736 is worth $63,070 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 17.9%, 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 13.0 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 4,055 workers (25.8% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $69,613. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 3,315 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $3.2B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $90,341 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $21,007, a 4.3x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Forestry and Logging concentrates at 14.88x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 9 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 58.4% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: goods manufacturing. 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.

• 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: 11.6% of housing units are vacant, above the Georgia rate of 10.3%, and down from 15.1% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 59.5% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 23.2%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 13.3% of the vacant stock, or 1.5% of all housing units against the 11.6% 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 $37,789 can pay without cost burden (~$945/mo), and 43.4% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 22.1% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Succession risk is real: 23.5% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Healthy participation: 62.4% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Short commutes: 20.1-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 2 institutions in Thomas County award 2,049 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Thomas County shows strong potential for forestry and logging attraction, with a 14.88x concentration and 90 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 23.5% 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. Goods manufacturing accounts for 58.4% of it, with food manufacturing the largest single sub-sector at 26.5%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.