Luna County, New Mexico

• 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 $27,640 (43.1%) under the New Mexico median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 7.8% below the national average, so the nominal median of $36,419 is worth $39,500 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 28.6%, 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 21.1 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 1,264 workers (27.6% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $41,241. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 2,243 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $1.2B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Utilities averages $104,581 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $19,374, a 5.4x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Animal Production and Aquaculture concentrates at 21.42x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 10 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 42.3% of the employment across them, the largest being health care 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 3.5x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• High home ownership: 70.9% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 20.6% of housing units are vacant, above the New Mexico rate of 12.5%, and down from 21.1% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 71.2% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 8.5%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 15.1% of the vacant stock, or 3.1% of all housing units against the 20.6% headline vacancy rate. That is the figure to plan an incoming employer's housing against, 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 $26,700 can pay without cost burden (~$668/mo), and 39.5% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 17.9% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Low participation: 44.9% labor force participation against a labor force that grew 3.4% between 2019 and 2024, so workforce development programs may unlock additional supply.
• Short commutes: 19.1-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Luna County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Luna County shows strong potential for animal production and aquaculture attraction, with a 21.42x concentration and 248 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans animal production and aquaculture, gasoline stations and fuel dealers, and transit and ground passenger transportation, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 42.3% of the employment across them, the largest being health care economy. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.