Coahoma County, Mississippi

• 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 $18,986 (33.6%) under the Mississippi median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 13.0% below the national average, so the nominal median of $37,461 is worth $43,059 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 35.5%, 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 16.2 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 896 workers (22.2% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $43,258. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 1,730 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $859M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $81,982 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $22,576, a 3.6x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Machinery Manufacturing concentrates at 5.74x 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, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 34.8% 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.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 2.4x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• Elevated vacancy: 17.5% of housing units are vacant, above the Mississippi rate of 14.6%, and down from 18% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 60.7% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 11.9%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 26.6% of the vacant stock, or 4.7% of all housing units against the 17.5% 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 $26,279 can pay without cost burden (~$657/mo), and 45.1% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 19.2% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Low participation: 54.1% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 11% between 2019 and 2024, from 9,427 to 8,390.
• Short commutes: 20.1-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 1 institution in Coahoma County awards 553 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Coahoma County shows strong potential for machinery manufacturing attraction, with a 5.74x concentration and 215 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans machinery manufacturing, accommodation, and general merchandise retailers, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 34.8% of the employment across them, the largest being health care economy. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.