Yuma 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 $34,925 (36.6%) 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 $60,545 is worth $58,725 at national average prices. BEA publishes price parity at state level, not county level.
• Elevated poverty: At 17.9%, the rate is in economically distressed territory and supports federal funding narratives (CDFI, NMTC, EDA).
• Talent gap: Bachelor's-or-higher attainment trails the national average by 10.4 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.

• Largest private-sector industry: Retail Trade employs 434 workers (30.7% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $30,936. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 1,106 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $612M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Wholesale Trade averages $72,950 while Accommodation and Food Services averages $21,029, a 3.5x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Animal Production and Aquaculture concentrates at 70.47x the national norm, top-decile concentration, the kind of signature sector that defines a region's economic identity to site selectors.
• Cluster depth: 11 sub-sectors register LQ ≥ 1.5, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 43.3% of the employment across them, the largest being resource and agricultural commodities. Demand reaches this base from more than one market rather than from a single one.

• In line with national: Home value to income ratio of 3.5x sits near the ~4.1x national average; affordability is neither a clear advantage nor a recruitment friction.
• Affordable rent tiers: 2 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $38,428 can pay without cost burden (~$961/mo), and 45.9% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Healthy participation: 65.6% labor force participation reflects a steady, available local workforce.
• Short commutes: 15.6-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 Yuma County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

Yuma County shows strong potential for animal production and aquaculture attraction, with a 70.47x concentration and 421 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans animal production and aquaculture, crop production, and amusement, gambling, and recreation industries, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 43.3% of the employment across them, the largest being resource and agricultural commodities. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.