Shelby 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 $5,828 (8.4%) under the Tennessee median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 7.8% below the national average, so the nominal median of $63,767 is worth $69,162 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 17.8%, the rate is in economically distressed territory and supports federal funding narratives (CDFI, NMTC, EDA).

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 74,115 workers (20.5% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $71,033. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 59,740 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $88.4B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $146,966 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $26,796, a 5.5x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Couriers and Messengers concentrates at 9.86x 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 66.2% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: freight and distribution. Read the count as depth within that single demand base rather than as spread across separate ones.
• Attraction whitespace: 8 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.
• Elevated vacancy: 10.3% of housing units are vacant, above the Tennessee rate of 10.2%, and down from 13.3% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 53.6% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 3.1%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 37.5% of the vacant stock, or 3.9% of all housing units against the 10.3% 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: 1 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $44,088 can pay without cost burden (~$1,102/mo), and 50.5% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 64.7% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Talent pipeline: the 6 largest of 22 institutions in Shelby County award 9,226 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Shelby County shows strong potential for couriers and messengers attraction, with a 9.86x concentration and 34,086 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. Freight and distribution accounts for 66.2% of it, with couriers and messengers the largest single sub-sector at 30.8%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.