Iowa was the world to Kim Sporrer. It’s the state where she was born and raised, went to college and spent almost all her working life.
She was comfortable, with a large circle of friends and family, and a network of business contacts built over a 17-year career.
Yet the thought of turning 40 made her restless.
Sporrer, who lived alone with her cat Callie in a rented 1930s duplex along a sycamore-lined street in the center of Des Moines, decided to make a change.
“I wasn’t actively looking for a new job,” Sporrer said. “After I had some friends who moved out to Denver, I became more intrigued.”
In January, she flew to Denver to visit friends, scout out job opportunities and see what kind of place it might be to live. She even interviewed with a public-relations firm – but didn’t get the job.
Several months after that trip, while browsing Monster.com, a job listing for another PR firm caught Sporrer’s attention. Linhart McClain Finlon was looking to fill a senior account position.
She hadn’t heard of the firm, but the job seemed like a good fit.
In Des Moines, Sporrer worked with Strategic America, handling public relations on behalf of Polk County, the state’s largest local government, and other clients.
Sporrer shot off her résumé to Linhart McClain Finlon. And then waited.
In the year ending in June, employers made more than 56 million new hires in the U.S. In 2004, more than 7 million people relocated across state lines. Iowa typically provides about 1.6 percent of the Colorado net migration each year.
Would Sporrer be part of those statistics?
The puzzle of creating a new job
To hire or not to hire, that is the question for a small-business owner.
For Sharon Linhart, the decision to add a new employee to her 12-member firm was a puzzle to solve.
Would there be enough business to support a new account executive?
“I was cautiously optimistic that the economy had recovered substantially and that it wasn’t just wishful thinking,” Linhart said.
If she didn’t make the hire, would her current staff be stretched thin?
“Clients notice if people are too busy.”
The toughest part would be finding the right person: experienced, energetic, able to deal with clients, and a good fit with the tight-knit staff.
“We needed someone able to coach and mentor the younger people on staff,” she said.
Linhart, who had worked at AT&T Wireless, started her own public-relations firm in 1996 with Cathey Finlon, owner of McClain Finlon, the state’s largest independent advertising agency.
The two agencies share office space – a converted two-story brick warehouse – near Coors Field. Linhart McClain Finlon’s client list includes manufacturers, technology firms and restaurant chains. The firm’s billings last year were $1.7 million.
The question for Linhart, as for any business owner considering a new hire, was whether additional business revenues would cover the cost of a new employee.
Such decisions by millions of small-business owners like Linhart are critical for economic growth.
Small businesses in the U.S., defined as companies with 500 or fewer employees, create 75 percent of net new jobs, according to the Small Business Administration.
The smallest businesses sustained employment in hard times. From 2001 to 2002, Colorado firms with 20 or fewer employees created 13,690 net new jobs, according to the SBA. Those with 500 or more employees shed 57,627 jobs.
Linhart’s hiring plans were thrown into doubt in January when seven-year client Red Robin Restaurants put its public-relations contract out to bid. The agency won the account back in February.
The clincher came in April, when the agency won an account with MWH Global, a Broomfield-based environmental engineering firm.
Linhart decided that hiring a 13th employee was the only way out.
“We couldn’t solve some of our problems any other way,” she said.
Midlevel marketing professionals at firms similar in size to Linhart McClain Finlon command an average salary of $62,650, according to Aquent, a Boston consulting firm.
The cost of health insurance, retirement contributions and other benefits add another $11,000, Linhart said.
To interview and hire a new employee would cost the firm $13,402 in expenses, including $6,662 in employee time, Linhart said. Most of that, nearly 40 hours, would be to screen several dozen applicants and interview five. Four were in state. The fifth was Sporrer.
“Our time was the biggest expense,” Linhart said. “But that expense is nothing if you make the right choice.”
Counting every job
At a government office, surveys and payroll data are fine-tuned to produce reports on jobs and the economy.
Colorado Department of Labor and Employment senior economist Joe Winter has never met Linhart or Sporrer. But he counts on them.
Winter, an avid jazz and blues guitarist, tries to get a beat on job creation, the state’s most closely followed economic indicator.
At the beginning of every month, Winter and his co-workers on the sixth floor of a high-rise on 17th Street crunch huge amounts of data seeking two key numbers: How many jobs has the state added and how many people are unemployed?
The job report “is probably the most comprehensive, currently available indicator of what the overall economy is doing,” said Bill Kendall, an economist with the Center for Business and Economic Forecasting in Denver.
Economists, homebuilders, businesses, bureaucrats and journalists all watch the employment numbers.
Linhart, too, said she weighed economic reports in her decision to create a new job.
Winter’s analysis relies on two major sets of data: a national survey of households and one of employers.
U.S. Census Bureau workers each month survey about 60,000 households nationally for the Current Population Survey. Field workers find and interview householders in person and follow up with phone surveys over the next three months.
Among the questions are: “Last week, did you do any work for pay?” and “How many hours per week do you usually work at your (main) job?”
The answers help determine the unemployment rate.
The Current Employment Statistics survey, in contrast, polls 160,000 employers nationally to capture how many nonfarm jobs are created and in what industries. Agricultural jobs, which are seasonal and often itinerant, aren’t counted in that survey.
On the week that contains the 12th of every month, large corporations across the country such as Qwest and Lockheed Martin send payroll data to their local Bureau of Labor Statistics office, which in turn sends it to a bank of supercomputers in New Jersey.
Labor department workers in each state recruit smaller firms to take that survey, making sure they have a sample that covers all industries and regions. About 4,500 Colorado employers, covering one-third of the state’s workforce, participate. Smaller employers either submit the survey by mail or dial into an automated phone system that captures worker headcounts.
In industries dominated by many small players, such as public relations, individual firms such as Linhart McClain Finlon may never participate. But statistical adjustments are made to ensure that jobs in each industry are properly estimated.
All the data flow into Winter’s office, where analysts check for anomalies. For example, when Colorado Mills in Jefferson County hired 3,000 retail workers in late 2002, it was a one-time event that briefly masked an overall job-loss trend.
A month ago, the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment released its monthly report. Colorado added a net 28,400 jobs between the weeks encompassing May 12 and June 12. However, that jump reflected summer tourism hiring. Most of those jobs will melt away by Labor Day.
About 6,000 of those 28,400 jobs came in professional and business services, a leading sector for job creation in the current recovery. Within the sector are advertising and public-relations firms.
If Winter and his team crunched the numbers correctly, their statistical estimates would have included a new job added June 13 at Linhart McClain Finlon.
Starting over in Denver
Kim Sporrer finds it hard to leave Des Moines but makes the move and survives her first day of a new job.
The Monster.com ad posted in April by Linhart’s firm attracted dozens of applicants. Others came through referrals. Many responding to the job offer were college graduates who lack the necessary experience.
Within 10 days of e-mailing her résumé, Sporrer had a phone interview with Linhart. It went well and Sporrer was invited to interview in person in Denver.
In the meantime, Sporrer took her first trip to Europe, visiting a friend in Paris.
“Going to Paris was a life-changing experience,” she said. “It opened my mind to the idea that there is life outside of Iowa.”
On the first Monday in May, Sporrer had a breakfast meeting with Linhart at Dixons in downtown Denver, a popular place for early-morning business meetings. Then came a full day of interviews at the firm.
In mid-May, Linhart called Sporrer with a job offer.
“It was a combination of her background, demeanor and the way she presents herself,” Linhart said.
Sporrer and Linhart said they ironed out details on salary, benefits and job responsibilities. The firm agreed to cover the first $1,000 of moving expenses, with Sporrer paying the rest.
Accepting the job created a whole new set of anxieties for Sporrer. By moving to Denver, she wouldn’t get to see the mid-July opening of her biggest project, a new arena within the Iowa Events Center in Des Moines.
She would be starting a new life alone, except for a few friends who had moved to Denver and her cat, Callie.
The response to her departure overwhelmed her.
“I have had a lot of people say I can’t believe you are leaving Des Moines,” she said. “People who I didn’t think cared, did.”
Her landlord also cared, objecting to an early lease termination.
On a warm and bright Monday morning in June, 10 weeks from when she first saw the help-wanted ad on Monster.com, Sporrer stood outside the doors of Linhart McClain Finlon, ready to begin her first day of work.
“I ran into a co-worker who got me through security,” she said later. “So far, so good.”
Sporrer received her employee handbook in a white binder from Carri Clemens, the firm’s chief financial officer, who explained the company’s retirement plan, benefits, time-logging systems and payroll schedule.
Linhart poked her head into the office. “How’s it going?”
“So far, so good,” Sporrer responded.
Following a lunch with Sporrer at Il Fornaio, Linhart drove Sporrer up to the Interlocken business park in Broomfield, tightly hugging the backroad curves in her purple convertible Lexus SC430.
They had an afternoon meeting with executives at MWH, the environmental-services firm that is one of the agency’s newest accounts.
Sporrer was eager to make a good impression. Linhart was eager to put Sporrer to the test.
“They need and deserve to be better known in their headquarters state,” Linhart said earlier that day regarding MWH, a firm with $1 billion in revenues and 6,000 employees worldwide. “They are one of the factors that helped us decide to bring another person on.”
The weight of one job
Every new job affects the public and private sectors, from sales taxes to legislative redistricting.
Sporrer’s move to Colorado and new job have rippled through the state’s economy.
She made a $1,200 deposit to rent a condo in the Golden Triangle, a popular area in Denver for young professionals. She spent $500 on clothes and shoes at Cherry Creek Shopping Center and the Denver Pavilions, including a straw cowboy hat she picked up for $30. She spent $750 on household supplies and food. The sales taxes she paid go to local and state coffers.
Receiving her first paycheck, Sporrer was officially a member of the Colorado workforce. However, she won’t show up in state population counts until she files her federal tax returns next year.
That’s a long lag time, but tax records help demographers capture population movements down to the county level. Polk County, Iowa, minus one; Denver County, Colorado, plus one.
The aggregate population count affects everything from legislative redistricting to government disbursements of tax money.
For example, about 40 percent of state lottery funds are distributed to local governments based on population measures. That money funds parks, recreation facilities and open-space purchases.
Sporrer’s arrival “means conservation trust-fund money” for Denver, said state demographer Elizabeth Garner.
Sporrer registered her Saturn in Colorado, trading in her Iowa license plates for Colorado plates. She will pay $600 more a year in car insurance here than she did in Iowa.
Colorado and the West have long attracted people looking to start a new life. But the economic slowdown of recent years has diminished that migration.
Sporrer experienced that firsthand on a visit to Des Moines in late June to finish moving. She left a shoe rack on the curb, among other items, for anyone to take. A woman driving by stopped and took the shoe rack. When Sporrer told the woman she was moving to Denver, the woman said she had just moved back to Des Moines from Denver to be closer to family.
Historically, migration to Colorado has been dominated by several large states such as California, Texas and Arizona.
Last year the number of people moving to Colorado minus those leaving – that is, the net migration – was estimated at about 22,600. That’s the state’s worst showing since 1990. In the boom year of 2000, the net migration was 82,458.
The current state population is 4.6 million.
Economists such as Tucker Hart Adams warn that builders are constructing more homes than can be supported by population growth and migration to the state. That may be one reason that the home-appreciation rate in Colorado the past few years has been 4 percent compared with double-digit gains elsewhere.
Sporrer said she doesn’t plan to buy a home until she gets more settled. For now, she’s enjoying the view.
“I have always wanted to live in a place with mountains,” said Sporrer, who can see them from her balcony. “I still look at them night and morning.”
Sporrer’s hiring at Linhart McClain Finlon was publicly announced July 28.
Since then, two staffers have left, one to another job and one to go back to school. Linhart quickly filled one job with a Colorado native living in New York who is moving back home.
The agency’s staff stands at 12 employees, as it was before Sporrer’s arrival.
“Losing good people is always difficult on the team, our clients and me,” Linhart said.
She again weighs the pros and cons of creating one new job.
Staff writer Aldo Svaldi can be reached at 303-820-1410 or asvaldi@denverpost.com.
