Colusa County, California

• Income near the national median: Median household income tracks the national median, indicating a broad-based consumer market.
• Below the state median: Median household income runs $23,450 (23.7%) under the California median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living erodes income: Local prices run 10.7% above the national average, so the nominal median of $75,672 is worth $68,358 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 19.3 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting employs 2,281 workers (40% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $57,173. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 2,329 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $2B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Utilities averages $162,515 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $31,048, a 5.2x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Crop Production concentrates at 55.02x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 8 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 56.8% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: resource and agricultural commodities. Read the count as depth within that single demand base rather than as spread across separate ones.
• Attraction whitespace: 3 sub-sectors register LQ < 0.5 with at least 50 employed, candidates for diversification or recruitment depending on labor-market fit.

• Stretched market: Home value to income ratio of 5.2x is well above the ~4.1x national average; attainable workforce housing may be a recruitment friction.
• Affordable rent tiers: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $46,338 can pay without cost burden (~$1,158/mo), and 50.8% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 63% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Colusa County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Colusa County shows strong potential for crop production attraction, with a 55.02x concentration and 1,559 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

Most of the employment across the concentrated sub-sectors traces back to a single source of demand. Resource and agricultural commodities accounts for 56.8% of it, with crop production the largest single sub-sector at 38.9%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.