Eddy County, New Mexico

• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 16.4 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest sector: Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction employs 7,809 workers (29.1% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $109,471.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $11.3B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Manufacturing averages $110,209 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $28,986, a 3.8x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Support Activities for Mining concentrates at 86.41x 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, suggesting an interconnected industrial base rather than reliance on a single employer or sector.
• Attraction whitespace: 8 sub-sectors register LQ < 0.5, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• Affordable market: Home value to income ratio of 2.7x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• High home ownership: 73.3% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 12% vacancy rate. In resort, rural, and seasonal markets much of this is recreational/seasonal (second homes), not available supply; confirm the vacancy-by-reason split before treating it as a redevelopment opportunity.
• Broadly affordable rents: All 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom tiers sit below the 30%-of-median-income affordability threshold (~$1,961/mo), a clear cost-of-living advantage for workforce attraction.

• Short commutes: 21.4-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: 6 regional institutions feed the workforce; the top three combined produce 16,649 annual credentials.

Eddy County shows strong potential for support activities for mining attraction, with a 86.41x concentration and 5,082 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The interconnected base across support activities for mining, oil and gas extraction, and pipeline transportation creates supply-chain attraction leverage rather than single-employer risk, a structural advantage for industrial recruitment.