Avoyelles 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 $21,431 (35.3%) 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 $39,325 is worth $44,586 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 27.8%, 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 24.2 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 1,438 workers (34.1% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $29,621. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 2,970 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $1.2B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Wholesale Trade averages $70,491 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $16,468, a 4.3x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Forestry and Logging concentrates at 16.45x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 11 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 44.2% 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 3.1x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• High home ownership: 70.1% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 21.4% of housing units are vacant, above the Louisiana rate of 14.4%, and up from 18.2% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 59.1% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 24.1%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 16.3% of the vacant stock, or 3.5% of all housing units against the 21.4% 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 $23,094 can pay without cost burden (~$577/mo), and 45.3% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 23.7% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Succession risk is real: 22.6% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Low participation: 49.7% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 4.8% between 2019 and 2024, from 15,978 to 15,212.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Avoyelles Parish per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Avoyelles Parish shows strong potential for forestry and logging attraction, with a 16.45x concentration and 40 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 22.6% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

The concentrated base spans forestry and logging, gasoline stations and fuel dealers, and wood product manufacturing, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 44.2% of the employment across them, the largest being health care economy. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.