Allen Parish, Louisiana

• 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 $14,287 (23.5%) under the Louisiana median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 11.8% below the national average, so the nominal median of $46,469 is worth $52,686 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 23.1%, 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 23.8 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 1,003 workers (32.6% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $41,676. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 3,698 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $1.1B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Transportation and Warehousing averages $113,271 while Retail Trade averages $29,154, a 3.9x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Forestry and Logging concentrates at 59.56x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 5 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 48.1% 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 2.2x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 74% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 18.1% of housing units are vacant, above the Louisiana rate of 14.4%, and down from 20.4% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 74.5% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 4.9%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 13% of the vacant stock, or 2.3% of all housing units against the 18.1% headline vacancy rate. Absorbable supply for an incoming employer is thin, and the gap between the two is the redevelopment and conversion opportunity.
• Affordable rent tiers: 1 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $24,030 can pay without cost burden (~$601/mo), and 44.9% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Low participation: 47.4% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 11.2% between 2019 and 2024, from 9,639 to 8,557.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Allen Parish per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Allen Parish shows strong potential for forestry and logging attraction, with a 59.56x concentration and 78 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans forestry and logging, gasoline stations and fuel dealers, and nursing and residential care facilities, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 48.1% of the employment across them, the largest being resident household spending. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.