Fellsmere, Florida Economy Guide

The Fellsmere income, poverty and jobs guide is the deep guide in this section, and the table below matches each common question about the Fellsmere economy to its key figure and the guide to read next.

The income, poverty and jobs guide breaks Fellsmere earnings into brackets, sets out the poverty rate by age, lists occupations and industries, and covers the farm economy and commuting in detail. Housing costs are in the Fellsmere housing and home values guide, and the people behind these numbers are described on the Fellsmere demographics hub. Every Fellsmere figure here names its Census or USDA release next to it.

Half of Fellsmere's households take in less than $55,893 a year in the ACS 2020-2024 estimates, roughly $17,600 short of the $73,491 midpoint for all of Indian River County.

That Fellsmere median comes with a margin of error of plus or minus $15,377 (ACS DP03, Fellsmere), a range of roughly $40,500 to $71,300, while the county figure is far tighter (ACS DP03, Indian River County). The Fellsmere average, or mean, household income is $72,447, against $108,404 across the county.

Per person the difference is starker. Income per Fellsmere resident averages $19,853, compared with $48,370 for Indian River County and $41,293 for Sebastian (ACS DP03, Sebastian). Large households explain part of the gap: Fellsmere homes hold 3.90 people on average (ACS DP02), so one paycheck is spread across more people. Median earnings for a Fellsmere worker are $34,108, against $40,341 countywide.

Public help reaches a larger share of Fellsmere homes than county homes: SNAP food benefits went to 10.7 percent of Fellsmere households in the previous year, (ACS DP03, Fellsmere), against 7.5 percent countywide (ACS DP03, Indian River County). At Fellsmere Elementary School on N. Cypress Street, free lunch eligibility covered 602 of the 605 students on the 2024-2025 roll (NCES Common Core of Data).

Fellsmere residents work mostly in construction, farming and service jobs, with construction alone employing 30.1 percent of the city's employed residents against 8.7 percent countywide.

Sorted by occupation, the biggest Fellsmere group is natural resources, construction and maintenance work at 37.5 percent of the employed, followed by service occupations at 26.2 percent and management, business, science and arts at 21.2 percent (ACS DP03, Fellsmere). Countywide the ranking flips, with 40.0 percent in the management and professional group and 9.7 percent in natural resources, construction and maintenance (ACS DP03, Indian River County).

Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting, and mining account for 9.1 percent of Fellsmere's working residents, against 2.0 percent in the county. Private employers pay 91.3 percent of Fellsmere workers (ACS DP03), compared with 82.1 percent countywide; few work for government or for themselves.

Fellsmere also works at a higher rate than its neighbors. The ACS finds 64.0 percent of Fellsmere residents 16 and older working or looking for work, against 48.6 percent across the county and 47.5 percent in Sebastian (ACS DP03, Sebastian). For Fellsmere women 16 and older the share reaches 71.5 percent, compared with 45.6 percent for women countywide. Fellsmere's ACS jobless rate, 7.8 percent, carries a margin of error of plus or minus 5.1 points (ACS DP03), too wide to set it reliably against the county rate of 4.5 percent.

County Business Patterns counted 160 employer establishments with 1,015 employees in ZIP code 32948, the Fellsmere ZIP, in 2023.

The Census Bureau reports an annual payroll of 33,209 thousand dollars, about $33.2 million, for those Fellsmere ZIP employers (County Business Patterns 2023, ZIP 32948). Most are small: 112 of the 160 establishments had fewer than 5 employees.

Construction firms are the largest group, 62 of the 160 Fellsmere ZIP establishments, matching the ACS picture of a construction town. One gap matters for reading these counts: County Business Patterns leaves out crop and animal production entirely (Census Bureau, About County Business Patterns), so jobs on the groves and ranches around Fellsmere are missing from the 1,015. For Fellsmere farm activity the USDA Census of Agriculture is the source to use.

Indian River County, the county that holds Fellsmere, had 492 farms covering 167,396 acres and selling $124.1 million in products in the 2022 Census of Agriculture.

That market value of $124,098,000 was up 17 percent from 2017, and 40,217 acres were irrigated (USDA NASS county profile, page 1). Crops made up 73 percent of sales. USDA publishes these figures for the county only, so they describe all of Indian River County farming, with Fellsmere as one part of it.

Citrus leads by land: the county's 2022 top crops by acreage were oranges at 17,834 acres and grapefruit at 5,222 acres (USDA NASS county profile, page 2). Fruit, tree nut and berry sales reached $63,061,000, ninth among Florida counties, and aquaculture sales of $21,773,000 ranked third in the state. About 34 percent of the county's farms hire farm labor, and in Fellsmere 9.1 percent of employed residents work in agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting, and mining (ACS DP03).

On nearly every ACS 2020-2024 measure of work and income, Fellsmere stands apart from both Sebastian and Indian River County as a whole.

The pattern is consistent: Fellsmere has more of its adults at work, a far larger share in construction, lower incomes per person and more poverty. Sebastian's labor force share of 47.5 percent and its 10.1 percent poverty rate sit close to the county figures (ACS DP03, Sebastian). The Fellsmere demographics hub covers the age and household figures behind these numbers.

Fellsmere workers average a 31.9 minute trip to work, about eight minutes longer than the Indian River County average of 23.8 minutes.

Some 66.6 percent of Fellsmere workers drive alone and 19.9 percent carpool, against 11.0 percent carpooling countywide; only 2.7 percent work from home, compared with 13.6 percent across Indian River County (ACS DP03, Indian River County). Sebastian workers average 31.1 minutes (ACS DP03, Sebastian), so both cities sit well above the county average.

Poverty runs higher in Fellsmere than in the county. The ACS 2020-2024 estimates count 18.8 percent of Fellsmere residents, and 27.7 percent of Fellsmere children under 18, in households under the federal poverty threshold (ACS DP03, Fellsmere), against 11.1 percent of all people and 16.2 percent of children in Indian River County. With a margin of error of plus or minus 9.4 points on the Fellsmere figure, the free lunch and SNAP numbers above are useful checks on it.