Smith 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 $3,302 (4.7%) under the Tennessee median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 3.7% below the national average, so the nominal median of $66,293 is worth $68,840 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 17.2 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Manufacturing employs 1,245 workers (42% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $70,351. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 1,124 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $843M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $121,550 while Retail Trade averages $33,766, a 3.6x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: General Merchandise Retailers concentrates at 2.74x the national norm.
• Cluster depth: 4 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 84% 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.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 3.7x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• High home ownership: 76.9% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Affordable rent tiers: 3 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $44,190 can pay without cost burden (~$1,105/mo), and 30.1% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 25% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Healthy participation: 61.3% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Smith County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Smith County shows emerging potential for general merchandise retailers attraction, with a 2.74x concentration and 254 jobs in this sub-sector. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 25% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

Most of the employment across the concentrated sub-sectors traces back to a single source of demand. Resident household spending accounts for 84% of it, with general merchandise retailers the largest single sub-sector at 55.8%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.