Garvin County, Oklahoma

• 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 $6,483 (10.0%) under the Oklahoma median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 12.2% below the national average, so the nominal median of $58,556 is worth $66,692 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 17%, 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 17.4 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Transportation and Warehousing employs 1,618 workers (27.5% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $65,862. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 1,434 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $2B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Manufacturing averages $95,428 while Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting averages $38,258, a 2.5x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Support Activities for Mining concentrates at 28.64x 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 28% of the employment across them, the largest being freight and distribution. Demand reaches this base from more than one market rather than from a single one.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 2.5x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• Elevated vacancy: 16.3% of housing units are vacant, above the Oklahoma rate of 12%, and down from 18.9% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 87.4% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 4.6%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 6.8% of the vacant stock, or 1.1% of all housing units against the 16.3% headline vacancy rate. Absorbable supply for an incoming employer is thin, and the gap between the two is the redevelopment and conversion opportunity.
• Affordable rent tiers: 3 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $38,315 can pay without cost burden (~$958/mo), and 30.9% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Low participation: 56.3% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 1.1% between 2019 and 2024, from 11,509 to 11,380.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Garvin County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Garvin County shows strong potential for support activities for mining attraction, with a 28.64x concentration and 458 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans support activities for mining, truck transportation, and gasoline stations and fuel dealers, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 28% of the employment across them, the largest being freight and distribution. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.