Excerpt from notes on Board of County Commissioners’ 2015 Annual Retreat written by Commissioner George Newman (rec’vd 04/07/15):

“…We were presented with some interesting statistics and discussed what impacts, positive and negative they may present to the community. A February article in the Wall Street Journal rated Aspen 2nd highest in the percentage of increased prices for luxury homes out of 100 renowned cities around the World — just a few percentage points behind NYC. Other interesting data came from a 2014 census using benchmarks from the years 2000-2013 from a variety of sources. Pitkin County saw a 17.3% increase in population to just over 17,000 residents. Employment increased by 6.3% over this period with approximately 22, 000 jobs today, with 84% of the jobs being service related. However, personal income rose by only 3.6% while average earnings per job decreased by 20.1% and per capita income decreased by 11.7%; making low wages obviously an issue. This, combined with our high cost of living and shortage of affordable housing means that out of those 22, 000 jobs, 14,000 workers commute to Pitkin County from outside the County.”

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