Rural Texas Facts Millions of Texans choose to live in small towns. Texas has the largest rural population in the nation with more than 3.3 million residents. Rural Texas covers approximately 80 percent of the state's total area. According to the 2007 Census estimates, 13.8 percent of the state's total population lives in rural Texas. The population of rural Texas exceeds the total population of 22 individual states and is greater than the combined populations of Alaska, North Dakota, Vermont, Wyoming and the District of Columbia. Seventy-seven percent of Texas' 254 counties are classified as rural. Texas is a small-town state. Eighty-two percent of the state's incorporated cities have fewer than 10,000 residents. Visitors spent roughly $4.3 billion in rural Texas (all counties not in a MSA) in 2008.  There are 218 domestic federal funding programs available to Texas' rural areas. In Texas, agriculture accounts for nearly 13 percent of the jobs in rural counties. SOURCES: The Status of Rural Texas 2008, Office of Rural Community Affairs; Economic Impact of Travel on Texas 2008, Office of the Governor, Economic Development & Tourism; U.S Census Bureau