Bee 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 $20,803 (26.5%) under the Texas median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Elevated poverty: At 17.6%, 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 21.7 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 1,037 workers (37% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $39,180. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 2,878 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $1.1B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Construction averages $75,646 while Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting averages $31,532, 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 8.58x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 13 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 32.6% 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.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 1.9x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 70.8% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 17.3% of housing units are vacant, above the Texas rate of 9.4%, and down from 23% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 77.3% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 10.7%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 11.4% of the vacant stock, or 2% of all housing units against the 17.3% headline vacancy rate. Absorbable supply for an incoming employer is thin, 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 $28,750 can pay without cost burden (~$719/mo), and 48% of renter households are already cost-burdened, 33.9% severely so; workforce housing cost burden warrants attention.

• Low participation: 45.9% labor force participation against a labor force that grew 7.8% between 2019 and 2024, so workforce development programs may unlock additional supply.
• Short commutes: 21.5-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 1 institution in Bee County awards 611 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Bee County shows strong potential for support activities for mining attraction, with a 8.58x concentration and 96 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans support activities for mining, private households, and animal production and aquaculture, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 32.6% of the employment across them, the largest being health care economy. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.