Falls 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 $21,229 (27.1%) under the Texas median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 7.4% below the national average, so the nominal median of $57,247 is worth $61,822 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 14.7%, 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 16.2 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 519 workers (48% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $38,695. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 1,052 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $669M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $105,887 while Retail Trade averages $38,695, a 2.7x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Animal Production and Aquaculture concentrates at 15.68x 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, but 72.2% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: resident household spending. Read the count as depth within that single demand base rather than as spread across separate ones.

• 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: 76.5% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 14.8% of housing units are vacant, above the Texas rate of 9.4%, and down from 33.2% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 84.5% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 6.8%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 7.9% of the vacant stock, or 1.2% of all housing units against the 14.8% 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 $45,370 can pay without cost burden (~$1,134/mo), and 30.1% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Low participation: 49.2% labor force participation against a labor force that grew 9.2% between 2019 and 2024, so workforce development programs may unlock additional supply.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Falls County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Falls County shows strong potential for animal production and aquaculture attraction, with a 15.68x concentration and 63 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

Most of the employment across the concentrated sub-sectors traces back to a single source of demand. Resident household spending accounts for 72.2% of it, with general merchandise retailers the largest single sub-sector at 22.4%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.