Holmes 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 $23,909 (42.4%) under the Mississippi median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 11.0% below the national average, so the nominal median of $32,538 is worth $36,560 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 36.4%, 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 21.8 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 362 workers (36.9% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $21,908. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 1,171 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $334M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $73,119 while Real Estate and Rental and Leasing averages $19,003, a 3.8x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Gasoline Stations and Fuel Dealers concentrates at 8.04x 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 50.9% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: health care economy. Read the count as depth within that single demand base rather than as spread across separate ones.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 2.5x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• Elevated vacancy: 18.9% of housing units are vacant, above the Mississippi rate of 14.6%, and down from 27.7% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 27.3% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 23.9% of the vacant stock, or 4.5% of all housing units against the 18.9% 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 $17,143 can pay without cost burden (~$429/mo), and 42.5% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 25% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Low participation: 44.7% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 5.5% between 2019 and 2024, from 6,045 to 5,715.
• Talent pipeline: 1 institution in Holmes County awards 1,424 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Holmes County shows strong potential for gasoline stations and fuel dealers attraction, with a 8.04x concentration and 116 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. Health care economy accounts for 50.9% of it, with ambulatory health care services the largest single sub-sector at 31.5%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.