Val Verde County, Texas

• Income gap: Households earn meaningfully less than the national median, which directly affects retail demand, housing absorption, and tax base.
• Elevated poverty: At 16.6%, 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 13.2 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Young population: Median age of 32 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest sector: Health Care and Social Assistance employs 3,203 workers (26.2% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $39,367.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $2.5B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Wholesale Trade averages $63,889 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $19,678, a 3.2x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Support Activities for Transportation concentrates at 2.84x the national norm.
• Cluster depth: 6 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 2.5x is well below the ~4.1x national average; supports talent attraction and family settlement narratives.
• Elevated vacancy: 10.2% 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 (~$1,652/mo), a clear cost-of-living advantage for workforce attraction.

• Short commutes: 19.1-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 48,998 annual credentials.

Val Verde County shows emerging potential for support activities for transportation attraction, with a 2.84x concentration and 274 jobs in this sub-sector.

The interconnected base across support activities for transportation, general merchandise retailers, and animal production and aquaculture creates supply-chain attraction leverage rather than single-employer risk, a structural advantage for industrial recruitment.