Pitkin 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 $102,645 is worth $99,559 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 27.1 pts, supports knowledge-economy and tech attraction.
• Aging population: Median age of 47 is materially above the U.S. norm; succession planning and senior-services demand are real factors.

• Largest private-sector industry: Accommodation and Food Services employs 4,703 workers (32.8% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $56,459. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 2,633 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $3.8B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $141,128 while Transportation and Warehousing averages $30,074, a 4.7x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Amusement, Gambling, and Recreation Industries concentrates at 11.23x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 9 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 72.1% 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.
• Attraction whitespace: 5 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 11.1x is well above the ~4.1x national average; attainable workforce housing may be a recruitment friction.
• Elevated vacancy: 31.3% of housing units are vacant, above the Colorado rate of 8.3%, and down from 46.7% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 78.1% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 6.7% of the vacant stock, or 2.1% of all housing units against the 31.3% 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: 1 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $65,531 can pay without cost burden (~$1,638/mo), and 47.7% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 24% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Healthy participation: 68.4% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Short commutes: 19.9-minute mean commute is a quality-of-life and labor-access advantage worth surfacing for site selectors.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Pitkin County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Pitkin County shows strong potential for amusement, gambling, and recreation industries attraction, with a 11.23x concentration and 2,418 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 24% of the working-age population within 10 years of retirement age.

Most of the employment across the concentrated sub-sectors traces back to a single source of demand. Visitor economy accounts for 72.1% of it, with food services and drinking places the largest single sub-sector at 26.3%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.