Prince Edward County, Virginia

• 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 $36,855 (39.6%) under the Virginia median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Elevated poverty: At 20.9%, 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 8.4 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Young population: Median age of 33 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 1,222 workers (30.1% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $35,457. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 1,916 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $995M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $80,954 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $20,964, a 3.9x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Forestry and Logging concentrates at 22.29x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 8 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 43.2% of the employment across them, the largest being visitor economy. Demand reaches this base from more than one market rather than from a single one.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 3.8x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• Elevated vacancy: 17% of housing units are vacant, above the Virginia rate of 8.7%, and down from 23.8% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 41.2% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 3.6% of the vacant stock, or 0.6% of all housing units against the 17% 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 $35,487 can pay without cost burden (~$887/mo), and 44.6% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 23% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Low participation: 47.2% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 3.8% between 2019 and 2024, from 9,312 to 8,955.
• Talent pipeline: 2 institutions in Prince Edward County award 1,473 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Prince Edward County shows strong potential for forestry and logging attraction, with a 22.29x concentration and 52 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans forestry and logging, furniture, home furnishings, and other retailers, and general merchandise retailers, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 43.2% of the employment across them, the largest being visitor economy. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.