Hardeman 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 $15,143 (19.3%) 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 18.9 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Aging population: Median age of 44 is materially above the U.S. norm; succession planning and senior-services demand are real factors.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 204 workers (55% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $33,000. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 449 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $268M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $72,927 while Health Care and Social Assistance averages $29,988, a 2.4x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Support Activities for Agriculture and Forestry concentrates at 6.58x 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 1.3x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 73.9% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 32% of housing units are vacant, above the Texas rate of 9.4%, and up from 31.9% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 29.2% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 12.9% of the vacant stock, or 4.1% of all housing units against the 32% 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: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $36,550 can pay without cost burden (~$914/mo), and 33.3% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 26.6% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Healthy participation: 63.1% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Short commutes: 14.9-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 Hardeman County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Hardeman County shows strong potential for support activities for agriculture and forestry attraction, with a 6.58x concentration and 17 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 26.6% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.