DeSoto County, Mississippi

• Income near the national median: Median household income tracks the national median, indicating a broad-based consumer market.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 7.8% below the national average, so the nominal median of $85,297 is worth $92,513 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 6.7 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Transportation and Warehousing employs 16,207 workers (27.6% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $51,574. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 7,602 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $9.8B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $74,663 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $21,951, a 3.4x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Warehousing and Storage concentrates at 12.41x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 7 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 71.2% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: freight and distribution. Read the count as depth within that single demand base rather than as spread across separate ones.
• Attraction whitespace: 6 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.
• High home ownership: 77.9% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Affordable rent tiers: 3 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $51,436 can pay without cost burden (~$1,286/mo), and 48.1% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 67.2% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Talent pipeline: 2 institutions in DeSoto County award 1,840 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

DeSoto County shows strong potential for warehousing and storage attraction, with a 12.41x concentration and 11,634 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

Most of the employment across the concentrated sub-sectors traces back to a single source of demand. Freight and distribution accounts for 71.2% of it, with warehousing and storage the largest single sub-sector at 51.1%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.