Colorado exports are rising again after more than a year of decline, thanks mainly to the weak dollar.
But state economic-development officials are hardly uncorking the champagne. The state’s 0.8 percent year-over-year export gain through April compares with an 18 percent surge nationwide as a depressed dollar fuels demand by making U.S. exports cheaper.
Export growth is one of the few bright spots in the struggling national economy. But the greenback’s effect in Colorado is muted by an exodus from the state of high-tech manufacturing jobs over the past two years.
Most notably, Intel last year shuttered its Colorado Springs semiconductor plant, which employed 1,000. That followed steady declines in the data-storage sector, once a marquee industry in Colorado.
“Things are actually in good shape, but it’s primarily one sector, chipmaking, that has dragged us down,” said Don Elliman, director of the state’s Office of Economic Development & International Trade. “Absent that, we’re doing about what the rest of the country is. We don’t have a lot of manufacturing in the state, so the weak dollar doesn’t apply to us as it does in more manufacturing-heavy states.”
Exports account for only about 3 percent of Colorado’s gross domestic product but traditionally have been an important part of the state’s high-tech and agricultural industries.
Through April, Colorado’s exports were $2.55 billion, up from $2.53 billion last year, according to figures from WiserTrade and the World Trade Center Denver. Pulling the numbers into positive territory were printers and related products, which jumped 102 percent to $237 million; molybdenum ore, which climbed 500 percent to $127 million; and beef, up 80 percent to $125 million.
Two printer makers, InfoPrint and Lexmark, operate in Boulder. A representative of Hewlett-Packard said the company does not make printers in Colorado.
The state’s exports of semiconductors, data-storage devices and related products fell a combined 38 percent during the first four months of 2008. The products, which accounted for $2.2 billion in exports in 2006, are on track to hit just $1 billion this year.
“Those jobs are pretty much gone forever,” said Patricia Silverstein, an economist at Development Research Partners in Littleton.
The good news, she said, is that research-and-development positions, which account for the bulk of the state’s high-tech jobs and often pay better, have more than offset the losses.
Greg Griffin: 303-954-1241 or ggriffin@denverpost.com
