<\/p>\n
Colorado will continue to add jobs in 2020, but at the slowest pace in almost a decade.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo reason to panic,\u201d said Richard Wobbekind, an economist at the University of Colorado Boulder and co-author of an annual economic forecast the university released Monday. Colorado, he said, will still be the envy of much of the nation in terms of job and GDP growth.<\/p>\n
The CU forecast predicts 40,100 new Colorado jobs in 2020, which should keep the state in the top 10 nationally. But that\u2019s well off the pace of just a couple of years ago \u2014 in 2018 for instance, Colorado added 64,900 jobs.<\/p>\n
The state labor market would grow faster if only there were the workers available to fill jobs. The unemployment rate in Colorado tied the record low in November at 2.6 percent. Wobbekind said the state\u2019s employers are importing labor from other states, and pulling workers off the sidelines with high wages, but that can only go so far.<\/p>\n
Despite the constrained labor market, Gross Domestic Product growth in Colorado will continue to outpace the nation through 2020.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd the reason for that is we\u2019re getting more productivity from the labor force,\u201d Wobbekind said. Productivity is rising in part because employers have squeezed more from the workers they have.<\/p>\n
\u201cColorado is still outperforming,\u201d said CU Boulder\u2019s Brian Lewandowski, a co-author of the economic forecast. Looking across almost all industries in Colorado, \u201cit\u2019s pretty much across the board a net positive for the state.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lewandowski said only the information sector, which includes newspapers and broadcasters, is expected to see a decline in jobs in the next year. Another sector that could have a tough year is oil and gas. Lewandowski said the sector is full of risk.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s uncertainty about oil commodity prices, there\u2019s uncertainty in Colorado about regulation of the oil and gas sector,\u201d particularly around new regulations like Senate Bill 19-181.<\/p>\n
But the good news far outweighs the bad. Agriculture, after years of difficult times, had a good 2019, due to higher than expected beef and corn prices.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd we think that\u2019s going to continue on into 2020 as well,\u201d said Wobbekind.<\/p>\n
Economists also expect the construction industry to expand. Colorado\u2019s population is forecast to rise by 49,000 in 2020, supporting the need for more residential construction. Meanwhile, large public works projects on I-70 and at Denver International Airport will continue for years to come.<\/p>\n
Probably the best news for Colorado\u2019s economy is that professional and business services, the state\u2019s largest industry sector (think executives, lawyers, and engineers), is forecast to add 11,700 jobs. This is the highest-educated and best-paid sector. Growth in these jobs has a compound effect, the high wages spent on retail, real estate and restaurants add new jobs in all those sectors.<\/p>\n
Looking nationally and globally, the economic storm clouds get darker. A trade war with China and other nations continues. The presidential election is less than a year away. And political uncertainty, as impeachment proceedings move through Congress, has businesses skittish. Surveys of Colorado businesses reveal increasing skepticism in the national and local economies.<\/p>\n
And many are looking for any warning signs of a slowdown they can find in what is already the longest economic expansion in U.S. history. These expansions don\u2019t last forever.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of the uncertainty that we have in the economy right now is contributing to this view that this is not only long in the cycle, but sort of the end of the cycle,\u201d Wobbekind said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
expected be to be top 10 nationally<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":65399,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,13,28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-65398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65398"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=65398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}