Lee County, Mississippi

• Income gap: Households earn meaningfully less than the national median, which directly affects retail demand, housing absorption, and tax base.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 13.0% below the national average, so the nominal median of $67,863 is worth $78,003 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 14.6%, 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 7.1 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 9,746 workers (22.6% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $73,493. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 5,281 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $6.5B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $86,199 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $19,919, a 4.3x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Furniture and Related Product Manufacturing concentrates at 26.93x 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, but 59.9% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: goods manufacturing. 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.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 2.9x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 70.8% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Vacancy level: 13.4% of housing units are vacant, below the Mississippi rate of 14.6%, and up from 12.8% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 71.8% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 0.6%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 19.5% of the vacant stock, or 2.6% of all housing units against the 13.4% 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 $32,500 can pay without cost burden (~$812/mo), and 48.2% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 23.2% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Healthy participation: 62.3% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Short commutes: 20.8-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.

Lee County shows strong potential for furniture and related product manufacturing attraction, with a 26.93x concentration and 3,150 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. Goods manufacturing accounts for 59.9% of it, with furniture and related product manufacturing the largest single sub-sector at 25.9%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.