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January 28, 2015 10:48 AM UTC

Colo. Unemployment Dropped More Than Any Other State in 2014

  • 17 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: Colorado Democrats celebrate via social media:

demsunemployment

—–

Good news for Colorado, as the Denver Business Journal reports:

Colorado added 4,700 payroll jobs in December and finished 2014 with an unemployment rate of 4.0 percent, the state's lowest since October 2007, the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment reported Tuesday.

The state's private-sector employers added 5,500 positions to their payrolls in December, while government jobs declined by 800 from November levels, the monthly CDLE report indicated…

…A separate survey of Colorado households, which does include those job categories, is used to estimate unemployment rates and the size of the labor force.

That survey showed Colorado's unemployment rate having dropped for nine consecutive months. December's 4.0 percent rate was down a tenth of a percentage point from November and down 2.2 percent from December 2013.

Improving Colorado's economy was the major theme of Gov. John Hickenlooper's re-election campaign in 2014, and the numbers certainly validate that strategy. Sure, there are plenty of different reasons why unemployment is falling so quickly in Colorado, but no matter how you look at it, this is a big talking point for Democrats. Colorado's unemployment rates dropped faster than any other state in the country in 2014, at a time when Democrats controlled the legislature and the Governor's office.

Comments

17 thoughts on “Colo. Unemployment Dropped More Than Any Other State in 2014

    1. That's what the Republicans in Congress are going with in taking credit for the improving economy before their congressional majorities were even sworn in.

    1. Aw, it ain't got nuthin' ta do with that, gertie. It's cuzza them damn Boulder hippys an' them furriner illeagle immygrints a-stickin' it to them fine westren slope awl-bidness foke!

  1. It's interesting to dig into the job stats a bit – from the original CDE and Denver Business Journal article, the top ten employers hiring in CO in 2014 were almost exclusively health and research-related. So if anything, I'd be inclined to credit Obamacare for a big boost in CO's jobs.

    Mark Harden wrote  in the DBJ:

    Across all of 2014, the biggest job gains were in leisure and hospitality, education and health services, and construction. Information and other services declined over the year.

    The cannabis industry has undoubtedly given a boost to Colorado taxes, and has undoubtedly  created many of those sales jobs, and also attracted tourists and travelers, thereby promoting the hospitality industries and offsetting the losses from the transient oil workers.

    Now we do know that in Weld County, 1,500 construction and mining and extraction jobs were added in 2013-2014. But many of those are going to go away again, now that oil is cheap and shale extraction is still costly. Anyway, those added jobs were less than those generated  by manufacturing (including Vestas wind turbine manufacturing), meat processing, and health insurance records processing. (Upstate Colorado report for 2013-2014)

    Here are the top ten occupations hiring online in Colorado in 2014. Plenty of nurses and administrators, computer techs, sales, and customer service reps – no roughnecks, no miners.

     

     

  2. Well, not to worry.  With the overwhelming mandate the GOP got in taking the Senate by 1 seat by 700 votes from Adams county, they will wrest the reins of the economy away from Democrats and drive it back into the ditch where it belongs…

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