Colorado ranked sixth worst among U.S. states when it came to job creation last year, according to estimates from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But was that weakness a statewide issue or a more localized problem?
Job losses, assuming they hold following revisions due out next month, were primarily centered in metro Denver with Pueblo. Fort Collins had one of the strongest metro economies when it came to adding jobs last year, with Colorado Springs and Boulder in the top tier as well.
Metro Denver suffered a 0.9% decline in nonfarm jobs, which ranked 385th worst out of 396 metro areas the BLS examined. Denver fell between Merced, Calif., and Hot Springs, Ark., in the rankings and had the poorest showing in terms of job creation of any large metro area.
Pueblo ranked 376th with a 0.3% decline in nonfarm jobs. Only 31 out of 396 metro areas in the country suffered a net loss of jobs last year. Colorado was home to two of them.
Greeley and Grand Junction had mediocre growth rates, but they were at least positive, with gains of 0.4% and 0.8% respectively last year. Greeley, which covers all of Weld County, ranked 333rd, and Grand Junction, which covers Mesa County, ranked 290th.
Parts of the state, however, still carried the torch for the kind of economic momentum Colorado has long been known for.
Fort Collins, which includes all of Larimer County, reported job growth of 3.8%, strong enough to rank 20th among all metro areas. Colorado Springs and Boulder also showed momentum with nonfarm job gains of 2.8% and 2.6% respectively. Their growth rates ranked 61st and 79th.
Colorado ended the year with nonfarm job growth of 0.8%, with strong hiring in the public sector making up for losses in the private sector.
Next month a benchmarking of the numbers using quarterly unemployment insurance premium reports will be out and it is expected to put metro Denver, which accounts for just over half the state’s employment base, in a much better light.
But it is unlikely to bring Denver up to the level of Colorado Springs, Fort Collins and Boulder, which combined account for about a quarter of employment in the state.
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What makes Denver’s poor showing difficult to understand is that things are holding up in terms of job openings, hiring and layoffs, according to a release Tuesday from the BLS’s Kansas City office.
Job openings in December represented 6.6% of employment in the state, ahead of the U.S. rate of 5.4%. While Colorado’s job openings rate is down from the peak rate of 8.1% two years earlier, it is solidly ahead of the pre-pandemic rate of 4.4%. There were two openings for every unemployed person.
Hiring also rebounded in the fourth quarter, while layoffs declined slightly, another boost to the argument that revisions could surprise on the upside. The numbers also show that the Great Resignation, a period during the pandemic recovery when workers voluntarily resigned from their jobs in large numbers, is not so great anymore.
An estimated 53,000 Colorado workers jumped ship in December, down from 85,000 that same month a year earlier. It was the fewest workers to quit their jobs in any December in Colorado since 2012 and under half of the peak of 116,000 workers who voluntarily left their jobs in October 2021.