San Juan County, Utah

• 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 $30,685 (32.2%) under the Utah median, so statewide income averages overstate local household buying power.
• Elevated poverty: At 18.1%, 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 15.2 pts, relevant for advanced-services attraction strategy.
• Young population: Median age of 35 is materially below the U.S. norm, a workforce pipeline asset.

• Largest private-sector industry: Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction employs 448 workers (35.5% of tracked sectors), at an average wage of $88,678. Every industry figure on this page is private sector; government employs a further 1,629 and is counted separately.
• Economic scale: Regional GDP of $823M (2024).
• Wage stratification: Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction averages $88,678 while Retail Trade averages $23,895, a 3.7x spread in the same local economy, with implications for workforce development and talent strategy.

• Top specialization: Mining (except Oil and Gas) concentrates at 63.60x 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, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 35.5% of the employment across them, the largest being health care economy. 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.
• High home ownership: 80.9% owner-occupied; rental supply may be tight for incoming workers.
• Elevated vacancy: 19.8% of housing units are vacant, above the Utah rate of 8.1%, and down from 28.1% in 2019.
• Mostly second homes: seasonal, recreational and occasional-use units are 53.7% of vacant units, so the headline rate is not available supply.
• Genuinely available supply: units listed for rent or for sale are 7.7% of the vacant stock, or 1.5% of all housing units against the 19.8% 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: 3 of 5 HUD Fair Market Rent bedroom sizes sit below what a household on the median renter income of $47,004 can pay without cost burden (~$1,175/mo), and 20.6% of renter households are measured as cost-burdened.

• Low participation: 55.9% labor force participation. The labor force itself fell 1.8% between 2019 and 2024, from 6,243 to 6,131.
• Talent pipeline: no college, university, or technical school is located in San Juan County per the IPEDS institutional directory, so any training pipeline serving it runs through institutions outside the county.

San Juan County shows strong potential for mining (except oil and gas) attraction, with a 63.60x concentration and 276 jobs in this sub-sector. It ranks in the top decile nationally.

The concentrated base spans mining (except oil and gas), oil and gas extraction, and accommodation, and no single source of demand accounts for more than 35.5% of the employment across them, the largest being health care economy. Supply-chain recruitment has more than one demand base to work from.