Independent economic studies for the governments, institutions, and businesses of Kittitas County, built on the county's own federal data and designed to hold up when a lender, a council, or a funder reviews them.
| Largest sectors by employment | Jobs | Concentration |
|---|---|---|
| Accommodation & food services | 2,497 | 1.62x |
| Retail trade | 1,871 | 1.1x |
| Educational services | 1,556 | 1.1x |
| Health care & social assistance | 1,371 | 0.54x |
| Construction | 1,355 | 1.52x |
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, 2023 annual averages, Kittitas County. Concentration is a location quotient (county sector share of employment divided by the national share), computed by Project Red Team. Covered jobs exclude the self-employed and some agricultural workers.
Kittitas County runs on roughly 16,800 covered jobs across about 1,370 establishments, at an average annual wage near $51,300, and it added jobs at about 5.2 percent over the year, one of the faster growth rates among the corridor counties. Hospitality is the largest private employer at about 2,500 jobs, followed by retail, education, health care, and construction, with Central Washington University in Ellensburg anchoring the education and public payrolls. The concentration points to how the county actually earns: arts, entertainment, and recreation run at more than twice the national rate, hospitality about 60 percent above it, and construction about half again above, the signature of a place that lives on visitors, a university, and steady building. That growth and that visitor dependence are both things a study has to price in.
Kittitas County spreads from the Cascade crest down through the Kittitas Valley to the Columbia. Ellensburg is the county seat and home to Central Washington University, which drives much of the local economy through students, staff, and research. The valley is known nationally for timothy hay, much of it exported, along with cattle ranching and a growing wine and recreation scene. Wind farms line the ridges northwest of Ellensburg, and the Cle Elum end of the county holds Suncadia and the resort and second-home market that draws visitors off Interstate 90.
A campus expansion, a wind or solar project on the ridgeline, a resort or lodging development near Cle Elum, or a new subdivision to house the county's growth all turn on the same two questions: what the project genuinely adds to the county, and whether it pencils against local wages, construction costs, and the seasonal shape of the visitor economy.
A current subject a study here can measure is the technology transfer hub that Central Washington University, Kittitas County, and the City of Ellensburg are developing in the historic Old Heat steam plant, funded in part by a state Community Economic Revitalization Board grant. The plan pairs a business incubator with research, development, and training space, with the goal of drawing new firms and family-wage jobs to a county whose payrolls lean heavily on the university and the visitor economy. An honest study would test how many of those jobs are genuinely new to the county rather than shifted from existing employers, and whether the incubator's returns justify the public money going into it.
Public-data path: regional input-output multipliers, free-data regionalized or drawn from a purchased BEA RIMS II order where a project supplies one, BLS QCEW and Census LODES for the local labor base, USDA NASS for the hay and ranching core, IPEDS and enrollment records for the Central Washington University economy, and the public grant and budget documents behind any publicly funded project.
We produce the study first: economic impact (what a project brings to Kittitas County, in jobs, output, and tax revenue, with local leakage handled honestly), feasibility and viability (whether it should move forward, measured with the finance a lender runs), and fiscal impact for public budgets and grant applications. Every engagement returns a full report, a one-page brief, a reviewer pack, and a decision package.
And if a study is already in hand, we review it: we inventory its quotable claims, attach the evidence, and tell you plainly what survives review before you quote it or fund against it. More on reading a study before you rely on it.
National firms fly in, bill the travel, and price a county like Kittitas out of the analysis it needs. We work across the interior West, we can be on-site, and we build every study on the county's measured federal record, the same BLS and Census data behind the numbers above, so the result traces to a public source and survives scrutiny.
Have a project in Kittitas County? Tell us what you are weighing and where. We will lay out what it takes to answer it, and what it costs.
Commission a study