Stone 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 10.0% below the national average, so the nominal median of $61,413 is worth $68,237 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 16.9%, 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 18.5 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 744 workers (29.2% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $32,922. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 1,388 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $565M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $79,225 while Retail Trade averages $32,922, a 2.4x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Forestry and Logging concentrates at 104.47x 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 43.4% of the employment across them, the largest being resident household spending. Demand reaches this base from more than one market rather than from a single one.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 2.6x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 80.7% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Vacancy level: 12.6% of housing units are vacant, below the Mississippi rate of 14.6%, and down from 15.2% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 80.3% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 11.7%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 4.8% of the vacant stock, or 0.6% of all housing units against the 12.6% headline vacancy rate. Absorbable supply for an incoming employer is thin, and the gap between the two is the redevelopment and conversion opportunity.
• Affordable rent tiers: 3 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $41,130 can pay without cost burden (~$1,028/mo), and 43.3% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Low participation: 51.4% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 4.1% between 2019 and 2024, from 8,229 to 7,895.
• Talent pipeline: 1 institution in Stone County awards 3,406 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Stone County shows strong potential for forestry and logging attraction, with a 104.47x concentration and 132 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans forestry and logging, truck transportation, and animal production and aquaculture, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 43.4% of the employment across them, the largest being resident household spending. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.