Daily Maps · September 26, 2026 · Archive
Oil and gas towns where a home still costs under $250,000
49 of the 553 counties with data match: Oil and Gas Share of Private Jobs above 10; Median Home Value under $250,000. The states with the most: TX (29), OK (6), WV (3), LA (3). The largest by population: Lea County, NM (73,103); Atascosa County, TX (49,403); St. Mary Parish, LA (49,114); Stephens County, OK (43,140). Sources: Census CBP 2023; NAICS 211 + 213111 + 213112 / all private employer jobs. Values are noise-infused by design; a component with fewer than 3 establishments is unpublished, so the share is a floor there; Zillow ZHVI 2024.
How to read this map
The map sets 2 ranges on the county data: Oil and Gas Share of Private Jobs from 10.0% to 100.0%; Median Home Value (county) from $0K to $250K. A county is drawn solid navy when it falls inside every range, dotted when it misses one, and hatched when it reports no figure for one of the measures, so a hatched county is neither a match nor a miss. Recounted today from the county database, 49 of the 553 counties with a figure for every range fall inside all of them, and Texas has the most with 29. The count in the title is the count on the day the map ran; the two can differ when a source is refreshed.
The figures are the same ones behind every county page on this site: Census population and household income, Zillow home values, HUD fair market rents, County Health Rankings measures of crime and health, NOAA temperatures and USDA amenity scores, each stored with its publication year and listed below for this map. "Play with this map" opens the live county map with these ranges already set, so you can move a handle and watch the count change; "Make your own" starts from a blank map.
Sources
- Census CBP 2023; NAICS 211 + 213111 + 213112 / all private employer jobs. Values are noise-infused by design; a component with fewer than 3 establishments is unpublished, so the share is a floor there
- Zillow ZHVI 2024
Solid navy marks counties inside every range on this map, dotted counties miss one or all of them, and hatched counties have no figure for that measure. On a heatmap, darker means higher and faded counties fall outside the range.