Craven County, North Carolina

• Income gap: Households earn meaningfully less than the national median, which directly affects retail demand, housing absorption, and tax base.
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 8.2 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest sector: Retail Trade employs 5,162 workers (20.9% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $35,750.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $6.9B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Wholesale Trade averages $87,606 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $22,371, a 3.9x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Forestry and Logging concentrates at 7.41x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 4 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, suggesting an interconnected industrial base rather than reliance on a single employer or sector.
• Attraction whitespace: 8 sub-sectors register LQ < 0.5, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 3.5x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• Elevated vacancy: 11.7% vacancy rate. In resort, rural, and seasonal markets much of this is recreational/seasonal (second homes), not available supply; confirm the vacancy-by-reason split before treating it as a redevelopment opportunity.
• Affordable rent tiers: 4 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom tiers sit below the 30%-of-median-income affordability threshold (~$1,647/mo).

• Short commutes: 21.7-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 6 regional institutions feed the workforce; the top three combined produce 28,942 annual credentials.

Craven County shows strong potential for forestry and logging attraction, with a 7.41x concentration and 88 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The interconnected base across forestry and logging, motor vehicle and parts dealers, and fabricated metal product manufacturing creates supply-chain attraction leverage rather than single-employer risk, a structural advantage for industrial recruitment.