Cochran 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 $33,163 (42.3%) under the Texas median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 8.7% below the national average, so the nominal median of $45,313 is worth $49,631 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 27.8%, 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 27.5 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Finance and Insurance employs 56 workers (68.3% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $48,302. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 282 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $291M (2024).

• Top specialization: Crop Production concentrates at 41.29x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 1.2x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• Elevated vacancy: 27.3% of housing units are vacant, above the Texas rate of 9.4%, and up from 25.9% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 79.5% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 12.1%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 8.4% of the vacant stock, or 2.3% of all housing units against the 27.3% 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: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $33,409 can pay without cost burden (~$835/mo), and 15.3% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Low participation: 57.9% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 14.6% between 2019 and 2024, from 1,315 to 1,123.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Cochran County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Cochran County shows strong potential for crop production attraction, with a 41.29x concentration and 66 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.