Wheeler 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 $18,309 (23.3%) under the Texas median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Elevated poverty: At 15.4%, 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 18.7 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 269 workers (38% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $29,658. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 530 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $394M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Manufacturing averages $121,161 while Other Services (except Public Administration) averages $23,509, a 5.2x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Pipeline Transportation concentrates at 143.84x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 6 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 35.1% of the employment across them, the largest being visitor economy. Demand reaches this base from more than one market rather than from a single one.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 1.8x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 76.2% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 26% of housing units are vacant, above the Texas rate of 9.4%, and up from 19.8% in 2019.
• Vacancy composition: the largest vacancy category is other vacant at 75.1% of vacant units, with seasonal and recreational use at 10%.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 13% of the vacant stock, or 3.4% of all housing units against the 26% 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: 4 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $49,211 can pay without cost burden (~$1,230/mo), and 39.3% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 23.2% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Healthy participation: 61.3% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Wheeler County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Wheeler County shows strong potential for pipeline transportation attraction, with a 143.84x concentration and 70 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 23.2% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

The concentrated base spans pipeline transportation, oil and gas extraction, and animal production and aquaculture, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 35.1% of the employment across them, the largest being visitor economy. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.