Scott 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 $7,661 (13.6%) 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 $48,786 is worth $54,816 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 22.2%, 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 22.2 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Manufacturing employs 6,736 workers (66.3% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $49,462. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 1,410 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $1.4B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Wholesale Trade averages $71,118 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $15,604, a 4.6x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Food Manufacturing concentrates at 34.10x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 5 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 83.5% 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.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 2.2x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 71.3% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 15.6% of housing units are vacant, above the Mississippi rate of 14.6%, and up from 13.1% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 72.2% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 2.1%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 12.7% of the vacant stock, or 2% of all housing units against the 15.6% 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 $30,259 can pay without cost burden (~$756/mo), and 28.5% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 13.4% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Low participation: 54.7% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 5.8% between 2019 and 2024, from 12,089 to 11,382.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Scott County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Scott County shows strong potential for food manufacturing attraction, with a 34.10x concentration and 5,515 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 83.5% of it, all of it in food manufacturing. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.