San Miguel 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 $16,446 (17.2%) 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 $79,024 is worth $76,648 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 29.2 pts, supports knowledge-economy and tech attraction.
• Aging population: Median age of 43 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 1,532 workers (31.6% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $49,332. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 849 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $1.1B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $131,126 while Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation averages $38,476, a 3.4x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Accommodation concentrates at 7.87x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 8 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, but 70.3% 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 9.1x is well above the ~4.1x national average; attainable workforce housing may be a recruitment friction.
• Elevated vacancy: 30.8% of housing units are vacant, above the Colorado rate of 8.3%, and down from 48.4% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 86.6% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 7.6% of the vacant stock, or 2.3% of all housing units against the 30.8% 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 $51,406 can pay without cost burden (~$1,285/mo), and 51.1% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 23.4% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Strong participation: 75.9% labor force participation among working-age residents indicates an engaged, available workforce.
• Short commutes: 16.7-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 San Miguel County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

San Miguel County shows strong potential for accommodation attraction, with a 7.87x concentration and 594 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 23.4% 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 70.3% of it, with food services and drinking places the largest single sub-sector at 43%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.