Wise County, Texas

• Income premium: Households earn well above the national median, supporting strong retail and housing markets.
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 13.5 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest sector: Manufacturing employs 2,898 workers (19.6% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $73,627.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $4.2B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction averages $88,492 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $23,462, 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 26.02x 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: 7 sub-sectors register LQ < 0.5, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 3.3x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• High home ownership: 81.4% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Broadly affordable rents: All 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom tiers sit below the 30%-of-median-income affordability threshold (~$2,336/mo), a clear cost-of-living advantage for workforce attraction.

• 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.
• Talent pipeline: 6 regional institutions feed the workforce; the top three combined produce 48,998 annual credentials.

Wise County shows strong potential for support activities for mining attraction, with a 26.02x concentration and 970 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 interconnected base across support activities for mining, mining (except oil and gas), and nonmetallic mineral product manufacturing creates supply-chain attraction leverage rather than single-employer risk, a structural advantage for industrial recruitment.