Waco, TX: 302,045 residents, 169th of 387 US metropolitan areas. Here is what the public data says about the households, the business base and what that means for advertising locally.
This is the Waco metropolitan area in Texas.
For housing, the median value is $234,100, 30 percent below the national figure. Income in Waco, TX: a median of $66,205 per household against $80,734 nationally, so 18 percent below the national figure. Both figures matter for pricing and for which offers land.
Who lives here matters as much as how many. The median age is 35.1, 3.8 years below the national median, so this is a younger market than the country as a whole. Ownership: 63.6% of households own their home, 2 points below the US share. The share of adults with a bachelor's or above is 27.5%, 8 points below the US share. Unemployment 4.5%, about the same as the US share.
Compared with Texas: income is 16 percent lower than the Texas figure, home values are 18 percent lower than the Texas figure, and business density is 3 percent thinner than the Texas figure.
Start with the count: 6,481 establishments with payroll. Relative to population, 21.5 per 1,000 residents, 14 percent below the national figure. Of those, 341 are home-services contractors (plumbing and HVAC, electrical, roofing, concrete, specialty trades and landscaping), a 5.3% share of the business base, about the same as the US share.
| Trade | Establishments | Per 100,000 residents | vs US mix |
|---|---|---|---|
| Other specialty trade contractors (paving, asphalt, fencing) | 24 | 7.9 | 0.72× |
| Personal care services (all) | 90 | 29.8 | 0.72× |
| Legal services | 102 | 33.8 | 0.73× |
| Beauty salons | 48 | 15.9 | 0.74× |
| Landscaping services | 72 | 23.8 | 0.79× |
| General freight trucking | 73 | 24.2 | 0.80× |
| Physicians' offices | 140 | 46.4 | 0.83× |
| Dentists | 88 | 29.1 | 0.84× |
| Child day care services | 60 | 19.9 | 0.94× |
| Lessors of real estate (all) | 99 | 32.8 | 0.94× |
| Electrical contractors | 65 | 21.5 | 1.01× |
| General automotive repair | 69 | 22.8 | 1.05× |
| Grocery and convenience retailers | 81 | 26.8 | 1.05× |
| Restaurants and other eating places | 524 | 173.5 | 1.09× |
| Self-storage facilities | 17 | 5.6 | 1.18× |
| Plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors | 116 | 38.4 | 1.35× |
| Highway, street and bridge construction | 10 | 3.3 | 1.39× |
| Automobile dealers | 55 | 18.2 | 1.51× |
| Roofing contractors | 30 | 9.9 | 1.52× |
| Concrete foundation and structure contractors | 34 | 11.3 | 1.88× |
Index: local share of all establishments divided by the US share; above 1 means the trade is more common here than nationally.
Relative to the national mix, concrete contractors, roofing contractors, automobile dealers and road and paving contractors take up an outsized slice of the Waco, TX business base. Concrete contractors are the widest gap, 34 of them, 1.9 times the national share. Thinner than the national mix are specialty trade contractors, personal care services, legal services and beauty salons. Specialty trade contractors are the thinnest at 24, about 72% of the national share. Close to the national mix: electrical contractors, general automotive repair and restaurants.
Per resident the densest are restaurants at 173.5 per 100,000 people, then physicians' offices and plumbing and HVAC contractors. In absolute numbers restaurants lead with 524, followed by physicians' offices at 140 and plumbing and HVAC contractors at 116. Grouped, automotive businesses hold 1.2 times the share they hold nationally, while legal services sit at about 73% of.
Many competitors in concrete contractors, roofing contractors and automobile dealers means the auction is expensive and the map pack is crowded; the winners are the profiles with the freshest reviews and the pages that answer the search precisely. A business in specialty trade contractors, personal care services and legal services enters a lightly contested auction. That is the time to build organic visibility and a review base before the category fills in. The population is younger than the national median (3.8 years below the national median), which raises the value of Instagram, streaming and AI-answer visibility next to search. Where income runs 18 percent below the national figure, financing and clear pricing belong in the ad itself, not on a later page.
What YelloPost runs for businesses in a market shaped like Waco, TX.
Search optimization aimed at the local queries that produce calls.
A clean, fast site with one job: make the call happen.
Review generation and monitoring across Google and the other places people check.
Around-the-clock lead capture on the website.
Campaigns on Google fenced to the service area and judged on booked work.
The map listing, kept accurate, photographed and posted to every week.
Waco, TX has 302,045 residents (US Census Bureau ACS 2024 5-year estimate), ranking 169th of 387 metropolitan areas.
The median household income in Waco, TX is $66,205 (ACS 2024 5-year), below the US median of $80,734.
The Census Bureau counts 6,481 employer establishments in Waco, TX (County Business Patterns 2023), or 21.5 businesses per 1,000 residents.
The median home value in Waco, TX is $234,100, and 63.6% of homes are owner-occupied (ACS 2024 5-year).
Measured against the US business mix (County Business Patterns 2023), concrete contractors, roofing contractors and automobile dealers have more establishments per resident than the US average; specialty trade contractors, personal care services and legal services have fewer in Waco, TX.
A quick review of where you show up today, then a plan for where you should.
Data: US Census Bureau ACS 2024 5-year estimates and County Business Patterns 2023. Updated 2026-09-29.