Robeson County, North Carolina

• 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 $30,410 (42.0%) under the North Carolina median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 5.7% below the national average, so the nominal median of $41,978 is worth $44,515 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 27.2%, 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 21.0 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 7,501 workers (28.7% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $44,144. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 7,561 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $5B (2024).

• Top specialization: Food Manufacturing concentrates at 13.04x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 8 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 52.3% 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 2.3x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• Vacancy level: 12.2% of housing units are vacant, below the North Carolina rate of 12.5%, and down from 13.7% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 74.6% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 3%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 16.1% of the vacant stock, or 2% of all housing units against the 12.2% 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 $29,006 can pay without cost burden (~$725/mo), and 38% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 18.4% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Low participation: 50.9% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 12.1% between 2019 and 2024, from 52,202 to 45,864.
• Talent pipeline: 2 institutions in Robeson County award 2,658 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Robeson County shows strong potential for food manufacturing attraction, with a 13.04x concentration and 5,372 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 52.3% of it, with food manufacturing the largest single sub-sector at 49.5%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.