Gunnison County, Colorado

• 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 $10,943 (11.5%) under the Colorado median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Cost of living erodes income: Local prices run 3.1% above the national average, so the nominal median of $84,527 is worth $81,985 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Talent advantage: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment exceeds the national average by 29.0 pts, supports knowledge-economy and tech attraction.

• Largest private-sector industry: Accommodation and Food Services employs 1,563 workers (24.3% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $31,794. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 2,219 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $1.6B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $84,051 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $31,794, a 2.6x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Amusement, Gambling, and Recreation Industries concentrates at 7.38x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 15 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 51.2% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: visitor economy. Read the count as depth within that single demand base rather than as spread across separate ones.

• Stretched market: Home value to income ratio of 7.4x is well above the ~4.1x national average; attainable workforce housing may be a recruitment friction.
• Elevated vacancy: 32.1% of housing units are vacant, above the Colorado rate of 8.3%, and down from 44.7% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 82.9% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 7.8% of the vacant stock, or 2.5% of all housing units against the 32.1% headline vacancy rate. Absorbable supply for an incoming employer is thin, and the gap between the two is the redevelopment and conversion opportunity.
• Affordable rent tiers: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $51,528 can pay without cost burden (~$1,288/mo), and 49.3% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 72.8% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Short commutes: 20.2-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.

Gunnison County shows strong potential for amusement, gambling, and recreation industries attraction, with a 7.38x concentration and 771 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. Visitor economy accounts for 51.2% of it, with food services and drinking places the largest single sub-sector at 26.6%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.