Live Oak 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 $21,326 (27.2%) under the Texas median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Elevated poverty: At 17.1%, 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 19.8 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 510 workers (22% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $36,483. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 891 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $2.8B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction averages $117,169 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $30,236, a 3.9x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Support Activities for Mining concentrates at 37.55x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 10 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 32.4% of the employment across them, the largest being resident household spending. Demand reaches this base from more than one market rather than from a single one.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 2.8x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 71.3% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 27.3% of housing units are vacant, above the Texas rate of 9.4%, and down from 40.1% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 46% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 7% of the vacant stock, or 1.9% of all housing units against the 27.3% 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: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $35,139 can pay without cost burden (~$878/mo), and 29.8% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Low participation: 43% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 10.5% between 2019 and 2024, from 4,614 to 4,131.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Live Oak County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Live Oak County shows strong potential for support activities for mining attraction, with a 37.55x concentration and 204 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans support activities for mining, rental and leasing services, and animal production and aquaculture, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 32.4% of the employment across them, the largest being resident household spending. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.