Teller 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 $10,109 (10.6%) under the Colorado median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Aging population: Median age of 52 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 1,436 workers (23.5% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $35,449. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 1,387 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $1.3B (2024).
• Wage stratification: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services averages $98,787 while Retail Trade averages $34,739, a 2.8x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Accommodation concentrates at 8.24x 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 76.1% 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.

• Stretched market: Home value to income ratio of 5.6x is well above the ~4.1x national average; attainable workforce housing may be a recruitment friction.
• High home ownership: 81% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 13.3% of housing units are vacant, above the Colorado rate of 8.3%, and down from 22.7% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 79.4% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 9.9% of the vacant stock, or 1.3% of all housing units against the 13.3% 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: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $58,413 can pay without cost burden (~$1,460/mo), and 49.8% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Succession risk is real: 33% of working-age residents are 55-64. Plan for retirements over the next decade and pair attraction strategy with talent retention.
• Low participation: 57.8% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 1.9% between 2019 and 2024, from 12,676 to 12,432.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in Teller County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Teller County shows strong potential for accommodation attraction, with a 8.24x concentration and 843 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally. Near-term succession risk is elevated, with 33% 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 76.1% of it, with accommodation the largest single sub-sector at 41.6%. Recruitment that widens the demand base changes that exposure; recruitment inside the same base deepens it.