Denver County, Colorado

• Income premium: Households earn well above the national median, supporting strong retail and housing markets.
• Below the state median: Median household income runs $752 (0.8%) under the Colorado median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living erodes income: Local prices run 5.8% above the national average, so the nominal median of $94,718 is worth $89,526 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at metro level, not county level.
• Talent advantage: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment exceeds the national average by 20.8 pts, supports knowledge-economy and tech attraction.
• Young population: Median age of 35 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest private-sector industry: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services employs 79,359 workers (20.5% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $170,286. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 74,932 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $128.5B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $185,543 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $43,084, a 4.3x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Air Transportation concentrates at 10.49x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 14 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 56.4% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: business and professional services. Read the count as depth within that single demand base rather than as spread across separate ones.
• Attraction whitespace: 8 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 6.5x is well above the ~4.1x national average; attainable workforce housing may be a recruitment friction.
• Renter-majority market: 48.8% owner-occupied; flexible labor mobility but consider home-buying pipeline if attracting families.
• Affordable rent tiers: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $71,437 can pay without cost burden (~$1,786/mo), and 46.1% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 74.4% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Talent pipeline: the 6 largest of 14 institutions in Denver County award 13,789 credentials a year. Employers drawing from a wider labor shed should read this alongside institutions outside the county, which this page does not aggregate.

Denver County shows strong potential for air transportation attraction, with a 10.49x concentration and 21,898 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. Business and professional services accounts for 56.4% of it, with professional, scientific, and technical services the largest single sub-sector at 45.9%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.