Lake County, Colorado

• Income premium: Households earn well above the national median, supporting strong retail and housing markets.
• Cost of living erodes income: Local prices run 3.1% above the national average, so the nominal median of $96,575 is worth $93,671 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 13.8 pts, supports knowledge-economy and tech attraction.

• Largest private-sector industry: Accommodation and Food Services employs 398 workers (30.8% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $27,728. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 764 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $564M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Finance and Insurance averages $68,774 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $27,728, a 2.5x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Gasoline Stations and Fuel Dealers concentrates at 2.51x the national norm.
• Cluster depth: 5 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 69.4% 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.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 4.8x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• High home ownership: 75.6% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 24.2% of housing units are vacant, above the Colorado rate of 8.3%, and down from 30.7% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 86.4% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 2.1% of the vacant stock, or 0.5% of all housing units against the 24.2% 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: 3 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $61,593 can pay without cost burden (~$1,540/mo), and 58.2% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Strong participation: 76% labor force participation among working-age residents indicates an engaged, available workforce.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Lake County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Lake County shows emerging potential for gasoline stations and fuel dealers attraction, with a 2.51x concentration and 43 jobs in this sub-sector.

Most of the employment across the concentrated sub-sectors traces back to a single source of demand. Visitor economy accounts for 69.4% of it, with food services and drinking places the largest single sub-sector at 57%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.