Andrews County, Texas

• 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 $6,234 (7.9%) under the Texas median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Elevated poverty: At 15.6%, 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 18.0 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Young population: Median age of 33 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest private-sector industry: Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction employs 1,665 workers (31.2% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $109,956. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 1,478 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $5.2B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $114,495 while Retail Trade averages $46,937, a 2.4x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Support Activities for Mining concentrates at 114.47x 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 38.1% of the employment across them, the largest being resource and agricultural commodities. Demand reaches this base from more than one market rather than from a single one.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 2.7x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 78.5% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Affordable rent tiers: 4 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $68,482 can pay without cost burden (~$1,712/mo), and 32.4% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 66.2% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Andrews County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Andrews County shows strong potential for support activities for mining attraction, with a 114.47x concentration and 1,454 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans support activities for mining, heavy and civil engineering construction, and rental and leasing services, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 38.1% of the employment across them, the largest being resource and agricultural commodities. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.