Oklahoma

• Income gap: Households earn meaningfully less than the national median, affecting retail demand, housing absorption, and tax base statewide.
• Elevated poverty: At 15.3%, the rate supports federal funding narratives across distressed counties (CDFI, NMTC, EDA).
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 7.4 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 228,290 workers (19.5% of the tracked sectors), at an average wage of $61,502. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 337,683 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: State GDP of $263.7B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $88,223 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $22,900, a 3.9x spread in the same economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Oil and Gas Extraction concentrates at 8.34x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity.
• Cluster depth: 11 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, suggesting an interconnected industrial base across the state.
• Attraction whitespace: 8 sub-sectors register LQ < 0.5, candidates for diversification or recruitment.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 3.1x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• Elevated vacancy: 12% vacancy rate; potential redevelopment opportunity.
• Affordable rent tiers: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $42,664 can pay without cost burden (~$1,067/mo), and 41.7% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 63.5% of the population aged 18+ is in the labor force, reflecting a steady, available workforce statewide.

Oklahoma shows strong potential for oil and gas extraction attraction, with a 8.34x concentration and 9,972 jobs in this sub-sector.

Cluster depth across oil and gas extraction, support activities for mining, and pipeline transportation creates supply-chain attraction leverage, a structural advantage for industrial recruitment.