Charles City County, Virginia

• Income near the national median: Median household income tracks the national median, indicating a broad-based consumer market.
• Below the state median: Median household income runs $17,753 (19.1%) under the Virginia median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 18.4 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Aging population: Median age of 53 is materially above the U.S. norm; succession planning and senior-services demand are real factors.

• Largest private-sector industry: Transportation and Warehousing employs 496 workers (37.3% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $53,521. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 396 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $358M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Wholesale Trade averages $109,967 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $30,033, a 3.7x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Crop Production concentrates at 11.47x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 3 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 70% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: construction and real estate cycle. 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 3.2x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• High home ownership: 86.3% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 11% of housing units are vacant, above the Virginia rate of 8.7%, and down from 13.8% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 86.4% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 10.6%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 2.2% of the vacant stock, or 0.2% of all housing units against the 11% 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 $55,455 can pay without cost burden (~$1,386/mo), and 31% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 20.2% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Succession risk is real: 33.8% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Low participation: 58.2% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 2.8% between 2019 and 2024, from 3,484 to 3,388.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Charles City County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Charles City County shows strong potential for crop production attraction, with a 11.47x concentration and 76 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 33.8% 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. Construction and real estate cycle accounts for 70% of it, all of it in specialty trade contractors. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.