Lincoln 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 $21,584 (35.5%) 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 $39,172 is worth $44,413 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 31.2%, the rate is in economically distressed territory and supports federal funding narratives (CDFI, NMTC, EDA).
• Young population: Median age of 29 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 2,989 workers (23.5% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $40,238. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 3,823 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $2.8B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $87,292 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $18,371, a 4.8x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Forestry and Logging concentrates at 9.51x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 13 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 35.7% of the employment across them, the largest being visitor economy. Demand reaches this base from more than one market rather than from a single one.

• Stretched market: Home value to income ratio of 5.4x is well above the ~4.1x national average; attainable workforce housing may be a recruitment friction.
• Vacancy level: 11.2% of housing units are vacant, below the Louisiana rate of 14.4%, and down from 12.5% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 72.8% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 3.6%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 20.3% of the vacant stock, or 2.3% of all housing units against the 11.2% 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 $22,113 can pay without cost burden (~$553/mo), and 53.9% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 36.1% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Low participation: 51.1% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 7.4% between 2019 and 2024, from 21,903 to 20,273.
• Short commutes: 19.2-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 2 institutions in Lincoln Parish award 3,139 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Lincoln Parish shows strong potential for forestry and logging attraction, with a 9.51x concentration and 50 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans forestry and logging, wood product manufacturing, and pipeline transportation, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 35.7% of the employment across them, the largest being visitor economy. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.