Rio Blanco County, Colorado

• Income gap: Households earn meaningfully less than the national median, which directly affects retail demand, housing absorption, and tax base.
• Below the state median: Median household income runs $29,997 (31.4%) 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 $65,473 is worth $63,504 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 11.0 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction employs 511 workers (52.2% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $105,402. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 1,184 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $690M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction averages $105,402 while Retail Trade averages $31,614, a 3.3x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Animal Production and Aquaculture concentrates at 10.57x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 5 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 83.3% of the employment across them depends on one source of demand: resident household spending. 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 4.2x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• High home ownership: 74.3% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 14.9% of housing units are vacant, above the Colorado rate of 8.3%, and down from 32.1% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 47.5% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 12.6% of the vacant stock, or 1.9% of all housing units against the 14.9% 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: 4 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $53,125 can pay without cost burden (~$1,328/mo), and 22.1% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 23.1% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Healthy participation: 62.7% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.

Rio Blanco County shows strong potential for animal production and aquaculture attraction, with a 10.57x concentration and 36 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 23.1% 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. Resident household spending accounts for 83.3% of it, with gasoline stations and fuel dealers the largest single sub-sector at 26.4%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.