Frio 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 $12,466 (15.9%) under the Texas median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Elevated poverty: At 19.5%, 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 23.8 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Young population: Median age of 32 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest private-sector industry: Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction employs 1,161 workers (37.9% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $93,343. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 1,470 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $1.5B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Utilities averages $103,215 while Retail Trade averages $37,789, a 2.7x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Fishing, Hunting and Trapping concentrates at 112.43x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 9 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 31% of the employment across them, the largest being freight and distribution. 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.
• Elevated vacancy: 15% of housing units are vacant, above the Texas rate of 9.4%, and down from 24.2% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 62.2% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 16.1%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 15.6% of the vacant stock, or 2.3% of all housing units against the 15% 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 $46,575 can pay without cost burden (~$1,164/mo), and 28.6% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Low participation: 51.7% labor force participation against a labor force that grew 7.9% between 2019 and 2024, so workforce development programs may unlock additional supply.
• Short commutes: 19.1-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Frio County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Frio County shows strong potential for fishing, hunting and trapping attraction, with a 112.43x concentration and 33 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans fishing, hunting and trapping, animal production and aquaculture, and heavy and civil engineering construction, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 31% of the employment across them, the largest being freight and distribution. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.