Donley 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 $19,726 (25.1%) under the Texas median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 19.1 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 100 workers (30.9% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $28,056. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 401 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $173M (2024).

• Top specialization: Animal Production and Aquaculture concentrates at 49.62x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 5 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 43.7% of the employment across them, the largest being visitor economy. Demand reaches this base from more than one market rather than from a single one.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 1.6x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 74.8% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 39.5% of housing units are vacant, above the Texas rate of 9.4%, and up from 38% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 28.3% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 9.3% of the vacant stock, or 3.7% of all housing units against the 39.5% headline vacancy rate. That is the figure to plan an incoming employer's housing against, 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 $42,440 can pay without cost burden (~$1,061/mo), and 19.9% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Low participation: 52% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 6.8% between 2019 and 2024, from 1,535 to 1,430.
• Short commutes: 19.4-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 1 institution in Donley County awards 290 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Donley County shows strong potential for animal production and aquaculture attraction, with a 49.62x concentration and 52 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans animal production and aquaculture, gasoline stations and fuel dealers, and crop production, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 43.7% of the employment across them, the largest being visitor economy. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.