Rusk 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 $9,818 (12.5%) under the Texas median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living stretches income further: Local prices run 10.5% below the national average, so the nominal median of $68,658 is worth $76,713 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 14.4%, 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 18.2 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 1,736 workers (18.4% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $39,343. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 2,785 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $2.8B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Utilities averages $140,469 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $22,081, a 6.4x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Support Activities for Mining concentrates at 30.29x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 13 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 25% 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 2.5x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 78.8% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 15.4% of housing units are vacant, above the Texas rate of 9.4%, and down from 16.6% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 53.6% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 23.9%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 17.2% of the vacant stock, or 2.6% of all housing units against the 15.4% 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 $42,034 can pay without cost burden (~$1,051/mo), and 36.8% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Low participation: 52.9% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 1.7% between 2019 and 2024, from 22,857 to 22,476.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Rusk County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Rusk County shows strong potential for support activities for mining attraction, with a 30.29x concentration and 637 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans support activities for mining, forestry and logging, and wood product manufacturing, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 25% 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.