Tallahatchie 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 $18,981 (33.6%) under the Mississippi median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 13.0% below the national average, so the nominal median of $37,466 is worth $43,064 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 24.6%, 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 24.0 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 208 workers (25% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $33,026. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 974 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $447M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Wholesale Trade averages $63,671 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $18,542, a 3.4x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Crop Production concentrates at 9.12x 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 65.6% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: resident household spending. 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.
• Elevated vacancy: 21.8% of housing units are vacant, above the Mississippi rate of 14.6%, and down from 22.5% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 61.1% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 18.1%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 18.9% of the vacant stock, or 4.1% of all housing units against the 21.8% 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.
• Affordable rent tiers: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $31,341 can pay without cost burden (~$784/mo), and 31% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Low participation: 50.7% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 2% between 2019 and 2024, from 4,955 to 4,854.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Tallahatchie County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Tallahatchie County shows strong potential for crop production attraction, with a 9.12x concentration and 66 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. Resident household spending accounts for 65.6% of it, with repair and maintenance the largest single sub-sector at 42.2%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.