Colorado’s economy added more than 52,800 new nonfarm jobs in 2006, its strongest showing in six years, according to revised job counts released Thursday from the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment.
After several years of modest growth in the labor pool, the number of available workers grew last year by 83,617, Colorado’s biggest annual increase since 1995.
Noting that Colorado’s unemployment rate is lower than the national average and job growth stronger in the state, University of Colorado at Boulder economist Richard Wobbekind said, “I wasn’t surprised to see labor- force growth pick up.”
The strong growth in the labor force, nearly double the amount seen in 2005, could indicate that population growth, in particular migration from other states, will be stronger than what demographers are capturing in their counts, said Gary Horvath, managing director of the business-research division at the Leeds School of Business at CU-Boulder.
More discouraged workers, defined as those who haven’t actively sought a job in three months or more, appear to be rejoining the labor force, Wobbekind said.
Lastly, more Coloradans appear to be launching businesses on their own, a category sometimes called the payroll of one.
Those workers should fuel future job growth if they are successful or provide a labor reserve should they decide to rejoin corporate payrolls.
Even though labor-force growth outpaced the number of jobs created, the unemployment rate dropped to 4.3 percent last year from 5.1 percent in 2005.
Colorado’s rate of job growth last year was 2.4 percent, according to the revisions.
Employers haven’t added more than 50,000 jobs in a year since 2000, when the state gained 81,200 nonfarm positions.
In 2000, the information sector and construction were important job contributors. But the information sector continued to shed jobs in 2006, and construction provided only minimal growth.
Professional and business services and natural resources and mining were two important drivers of job growth last year, said Joseph Winter, a senior labor economist with the department.
Professional and business services, a broad category that includes workers as diverse as accountants, receptionists and research scientists, grew by 4.6 percent, Winter said.
Employment in natural resources and mining surged by 21 percent last year, he added.
The state also released job numbers for January on Thursday that showed a slight uptick in the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate, to 4.1 percent from 4 percent in December.
“The Colorado labor market began the year on a steady note with unemployment remaining relatively low and job growth expanding at a moderate pace,” Donald Mares, the department’s director, noted in a statement.
Staff writer Aldo Svaldi can be reached at 303-954-1410 or asvaldi@denverpost.com.
