Rifle, Colorado

Unemployment across Garfield County, CO, which contains Rifle, is 3.1%, lower than in 91% of the 4,226 measured US cities.

Employment across Garfield County, CO, which contains Rifle, fell 2.0% over the past year, to 32,506 employed residents.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes city-level labor data only for places of 25,000 or more. This is the figure for Garfield County, CO, which contains this city.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s house price index for the non-metropolitan parts of Colorado is up 46% over five years, and up 2.8% over the last year. It follows repeat sales of the same homes, so it measures price change rather than which homes happened to sell.

Homeowners here who pay a tax bill pay a median of $1,448 a year in real estate taxes, about 0.35% of the median home value.

HUD’s Fair Market Rent for a two-bedroom, set near the 40th percentile of recent new leases, is $1,605, some 23% above the $1,308 tenants already here pay.

At HUD’s Fair Market Rent of $1,605 a month for a two-bedroom, keeping rent to 30% of income takes a household income of about $64,200 a year, about 80% of the median household income here of $80,000.

The typical renter household here spends 27% of its income on rent, below the 30% threshold at which a household is considered cost-burdened. Median gross rent runs $1,308 a month.

A median home at $413,500 costs 4.5 times the median income of its owner-occupied households, $92,112, above the historic benchmark of about 3 times income.

These measures come from the same ACS release as the income they are compared with. They compare housing cost with local earnings only: transport, groceries, healthcare, insurance and taxes are not in them. How to read affordability, the two rent figures.

5 of the twelve months have a normal average temperature between 55°F and 80°F. July averages a high of 92°F and January a low of 13°F.

Normal annual precipitation is 10.7 inches.

Air quality measures a median index of 49, in the Good band, and about 5 days a year pass 100, the threshold at which the air is unhealthy for sensitive groups.

Climate figures are thirty-year normals, not current conditions. Air quality is measured by EPA monitors and published by county only where a monitor sits; a county without one shows nothing rather than an estimate, and a county reading is still the county’s. How to read climate and air quality.

Each of these is absent for a reason, not by oversight. The Area Score is calculated without them; the weighting is on the methodology page.

Cost of living

Price parities are published for metropolitan areas, and this place lies outside one.

Taxes

Income and sales taxes are not published: no source covers them nationally with a method open enough to check. Property taxes are shown in the housing section but are not part of the score. Cost of living is published where the Bureau of Economic Analysis measures it, though not for this place. Nothing here is individualized tax advice.

Anything about a specific address

Every figure describes an area, not a street or a house.

Every city here is measured on the same scale from the same source releases, so the comparison is like for like. A higher Area Score reflects AreaProfile’s standardized weighting rather than a judgment about which is the better place to live.

Put Rifle side by side with a similar place.

Profile recalculated October 8, 2026. Recalculation is not the same as new source data — each figure above shows the period its source actually covers. Read the full methodology, or every source with how often each updates.

Every ZIP area in Rifle with census figures of its own, largest first. The ones linked below diverge enough from the city as a whole to carry a full profile; the rest track Rifle closely, so their figures are here rather than on a page that would repeat this one. An Area Score is calculated for published profiles only, which is why it is blank on those rows.