Oldham County, Texas

• Income near the national median: Median household income tracks the national median, indicating a broad-based consumer market.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 8.2% below the national average, so the nominal median of $79,900 is worth $87,037 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 20.7%, 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 14.3 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Young population: Median age of 31 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 54 workers (43.9% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $28,804. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 297 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $404M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Wholesale Trade averages $78,847 while Retail Trade averages $28,804, 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 77.98x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 3 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 73.9% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: resource and agricultural commodities. 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 2.0x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 73.6% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 20.9% of housing units are vacant, above the Texas rate of 9.4%, and down from 21.5% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 69.1% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 16%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 14.8% of the vacant stock, or 3.1% of all housing units against the 20.9% 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 $56,875 can pay without cost burden (~$1,422/mo), and 32.1% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Low participation: 52.7% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 8.6% between 2019 and 2024, from 954 to 872.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Oldham County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Oldham County shows strong potential for animal production and aquaculture attraction, with a 77.98x concentration and 96 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. Resource and agricultural commodities accounts for 73.9% of it, with animal production and aquaculture the largest single sub-sector at 67.6%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.