For communities to compete in today’s economy, an important first step is to get the economics right. For many rural, western communities this often means understanding the role of the nearby National Forest or other public lands.
Headwaters Economics has created a number of free tools to help local leaders, public land managers, elected officials, business owners, and others improve local community development decisions.
For example, to understand broader trends, we created a series of socioeconomic profiles that examine each of the counties adjacent to National Forests in Region 2 (CO, KS, NE, SD, and WY) showing long-term trends in population, employment, personal income, income earned by industry, wages, age, race and ethnicity, housing affordability, education, and other indicators.