DENVER—State officials say Colorado’s unemployment rate rose for the fourth straight month in August and now stands at 5.4 percent.
That was still lower than the nationwide unemployment rate of 6.1 percent in August, the highest level in five years.
The state Department of Labor and Employment said Friday the August rate rose two-tenths of a percentage point as job growth slowed. The jobless rate in August 2007 was 3.8 percent.
Seasonally adjusted figures show the number of Coloradans with jobs fell by 21,500 to just under 2.6 million in August. It’s the largest one-month decline since 1976.
The state labor department says 147,300 Coloradans who were looking for jobs in August couldn’t find them. That’s 2,700 more than the previous month.
A year ago, the number of unemployed Coloradans was 104,400.
The professional and business services, government, and educational and health services sectors added the most jobs in August, but the construction and financial activities sectors shed workers. In the past 12 months, the construction industry has pared about 6,100 workers as woes in the housing market continue, the labor department said.
Gov. Bill Ritter’s Office of State Planning and Budgeting had some good news though in an economic forecast it released Friday. It predicts the average unemployment rate for Colorado this year will be 4.9 percent and will begin a slow decline sometime next year.
“Colorado’s economy continues to show that it is more resilient and perhaps better poised to rebound from the current national financial turmoil than the national economy,” the forecast said, noting that Colorado has lower unemployment, greater job growth and lower inflation than the nation overall.
Colorado has been helped by falling gas prices at the pump in the Rocky Mountain region and also may be sheltered by the renewable energy industry, which could provide economic growth for the state, the report said.
Despite foreclosures, the residential real estate market is doing better in Colorado than other parts of the country, the report said. It said declines in Denver home prices have been relatively low among metropolitan areas, and the influx of oil and gas workers on the Western Slope has kept the real estate market there strong.
