The development of rural areas and agriculture, as the basic sector of agricultural settlements, is determined by a large number of simultaneously and cumulatively acting factors. The conducted correlation analysis of the significance of selected statistical indicators of municipalities allowed us to identify three resulting criteria that reflect the effectiveness of socio-economic development of territories from the point of view of the population, business and government: average monthly wages of employees of organizations (excluding small businesses); the volume of shipped goods of own production, performed works and services in-house; actually executed local budget revenues. Accordingly, three types of regression models were built and the degree of influence of common variables, which are significant in all models and act as the basis for conducting cluster analysis of municipalities, was assessed. The results of clustering made it possible to identify the main groups and subgroups of districts with different characteristics of indicators and directions for the development of economic potential.