Panola 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 $13,582 (17.3%) 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 18.7 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Construction employs 1,043 workers (18.7% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $75,053. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 1,361 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $2.4B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $108,782 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $18,305, a 5.9x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Support Activities for Mining concentrates at 51.12x 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 29.9% of the employment across them, the largest being resource and agricultural commodities. Demand reaches this base from more than one market rather than from a single one.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 2.4x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 79.9% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 18% of housing units are vacant, above the Texas rate of 9.4%, and down from 23.4% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 30.6% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 0.7% of the vacant stock, or 0.1% of all housing units against the 18% 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 $33,464 can pay without cost burden (~$837/mo), and 29.4% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 22.6% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Low participation: 55.1% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 0.6% between 2019 and 2024, from 10,054 to 9,997.
• Talent pipeline: 1 institution in Panola County awards 897 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Panola County shows strong potential for support activities for mining attraction, with a 51.12x concentration and 660 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 22.6% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

The concentrated base spans support activities for mining, oil and gas extraction, and heavy and civil engineering construction, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 29.9% of the employment across them, the largest being resource and agricultural commodities. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.