Scotland 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 $26,658 (36.8%) 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 $45,730 is worth $48,494 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 25.8%, 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 19.1 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Manufacturing employs 2,512 workers (35.5% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $65,230. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 2,088 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $1.6B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $68,009 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $19,298, a 3.5x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Transportation Equipment Manufacturing concentrates at 6.90x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 6 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 54.6% 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 2.5x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• Elevated vacancy: 12.9% of housing units are vacant, above the North Carolina rate of 12.5%, and down from 15.6% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 92.7% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 2.9%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 2.4% of the vacant stock, or 0.3% of all housing units against the 12.9% 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 $27,008 can pay without cost burden (~$675/mo), and 42.1% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 23.8% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Low participation: 52.9% labor force participation against a labor force that grew 2.5% between 2019 and 2024, so workforce development programs may unlock additional supply.

Scotland County shows strong potential for transportation equipment manufacturing attraction, with a 6.90x concentration and 941 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 54.6% of it, with transportation equipment manufacturing the largest single sub-sector at 45.8%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.