Weakley 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 $17,715 (25.5%) under the Tennessee median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 8.1% below the national average, so the nominal median of $51,880 is worth $56,453 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 19%, 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 13.0 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Manufacturing employs 1,959 workers (35.6% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $48,989. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 3,127 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $1.4B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction averages $73,467 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $18,643, a 3.9x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Truck Transportation concentrates at 3.22x the national norm, strong concentration that anchors the local economy and supports supply-chain attraction strategy.
• Cluster depth: 7 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 50.4% 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.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 2.9x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• Elevated vacancy: 11.1% of housing units are vacant, above the Tennessee rate of 10.2%, and down from 12.6% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 77.2% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 6.6%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 12.3% of the vacant stock, or 1.4% of all housing units against the 11.1% headline vacancy rate. Absorbable supply for an incoming employer is thin, and the gap between the two is the redevelopment and conversion opportunity.
• Affordable rent tiers: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $29,355 can pay without cost burden (~$734/mo), and 36% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Low participation: 55.1% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 0.2% between 2019 and 2024, from 15,183 to 15,159.
• Short commutes: 20.9-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.

Weakley County shows meaningful potential for truck transportation attraction, with a 3.22x concentration and 277 jobs in this sub-sector.

Most of the employment across the concentrated sub-sectors traces back to a single source of demand. Resident household spending accounts for 50.4% of it, with general merchandise retailers the largest single sub-sector at 29%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.