Gaines 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 $4,344 (5.5%) 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 24.0 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Young population: Median age of 29 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest private-sector industry: Construction employs 1,186 workers (22.8% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $77,966. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 1,406 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $2.3B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction averages $92,755 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $24,136, a 3.8x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Support Activities for Mining concentrates at 43.75x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 15 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 33.2% of the employment across them, the largest being construction and real estate cycle. Demand reaches this base from more than one market rather than from a single one.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 2.7x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 74.6% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 10.2% of housing units are vacant, above the Texas rate of 9.4%, and down from 10.6% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 63.2% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 0%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 36.8% of the vacant stock, or 3.8% of all housing units against the 10.2% 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 $42,153 can pay without cost burden (~$1,054/mo), and 23.4% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 61% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Gaines County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Gaines County shows strong potential for support activities for mining attraction, with a 43.75x concentration and 508 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans support activities for mining, support activities for agriculture and forestry, and pipeline transportation, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 33.2% of the employment across them, the largest being construction and real estate cycle. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.