Bradley County, Tennessee

• 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 $3,043 (4.4%) under the Tennessee median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 11.9% below the national average, so the nominal median of $66,552 is worth $75,541 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 11.3 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Manufacturing employs 7,621 workers (23.4% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $71,679. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 4,628 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $6.7B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $81,747 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $20,824, a 3.9x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Electrical Equipment, Appliance Manufacturing concentrates at 18.31x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 10 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 59.2% 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: 3 sub-sectors register LQ < 0.5 with at least 50 employed, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 3.9x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• Affordable rent tiers: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $41,745 can pay without cost burden (~$1,044/mo), and 41.7% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 61.7% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Talent pipeline: 4 institutions in Bradley County award 2,453 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Bradley County shows strong potential for electrical equipment, appliance manufacturing attraction, with a 18.31x concentration and 2,091 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 59.2% of it, with electrical equipment, appliance manufacturing the largest single sub-sector at 20.4%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.