Denver resident Reggie Garner doesn’t like the job prospects he faces, especially when it comes to finding something with a salary and benefits.
“The jobs are not out there,” he said while searching through listings online at the Denver Workforce Center. “It doesn’t look good.”
The former telecom-industry salesman recently left a job selling siding and picked up a temporary position helping out the Barack Obama campaign for $9 an hour.
After working for the past several years at Target and doing landscaping, William Maynard is again looking for work.
“I’ll take anything I can get now,” said Maynard, who hasn’t found career stability since leaving a telecom engineering job in 2002 that Qwest Communications was moving to Albuquerque.
Garner and Maynard are among thousands of state residents thrown into the job hunt as a deepening recession dims employment prospects.
Since the state unemployment rate bottomed at 3.6 percent in April 2007, the number of unemployed has shot up by 45,343 to 142,194, for a 5.2 percent unemployment rate in September.
That 47 percent increase in unemployment rolls came even though Colorado added 45,500 payroll jobs in the past 18 months, making it one of the strongest performers in the country.
And what happens if layoffs escalate in the months ahead as many economists expect?
“Fallout from the financial crisis is rapidly spreading to other parts of economy. I don’t expect state job gains to last much longer,” said Bill Kendall, an economist with the Center for Business & Economic Forecasting in Denver.
Qwest said Wednesday that it would eliminate 1,200 jobs, many of which are expected to be in Colorado, and money manager Janus Capital Group announced last month that it would let 110 workers go.
Annual job growth in the state slowed to a 1 percent pace this September versus a 2.5 percent pace in September 2007, said Tim Sheesley, a corporate economist with Xcel Energy.
Sheesley cut his forecast for job growth for next year to 0.7 percent versus 1.5 percent this year.
Slower job creation is showing up in fewer job listings and higher unemployment-insurance claims.
Employees staying put
The Colorado Department of Labor and Employment’s Job Link service has seen job listings fall from 28,564 a year ago to 18,175 last month, said spokesman Bill Thoennes.
“Workers who are lucky enough to have jobs are hunkering down and staying put, unwilling to quit a job they don’t like because they have no expectation that finding another job would be easy,” he said.
First-time unemployment-insurance claims, increasing at a 10 percent annual pace in the first quarter, have recently risen at a 40 to 50 percent pace, said Michael Rose, chief of statistical programs with the department.
One explanation for the sharp rise in unemployment despite continued job growth could be that out-of-state workers moved here and absorbed some of the new jobs, said Richard Wobbekind, an associate dean with the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Leeds School of Business.
“In-migration has continued at a pretty brisk pace,” he said. “You have to assume that some of this in-migration is specifically to fill jobs.”
Another explanation is that self-employed workers, such as independent real estate agents, may be increasingly seeking to join payrolls as their incomes dry up.
Mortgage industry suffers
Although Colorado is still adding jobs overall, several industries are shedding them.
Providers of mortgages and other credit have shrunk payrolls by 3,200 jobs since the unemployment rate bottomed 18 months ago. Construction is off 5,100 positions; manufacturing 3,800; and insurance 1,400.
Given that a housing downturn and financial crisis are weighing on the economy, those losses aren’t unexpected.
Economists are watching the industries that have driven job gains in the state in recent years to see how they hold up.
Natural resources, although a smaller sector of economy, has generated thousands of jobs directly and indirectly, helping to pull the state out of the last recession.
“A slumping national economy could hold down demand for natural gas, pushing prices lower and dimming prospects for Colorado producers in the short term,” Sheesley said.
Government payrolls, which grew by 12,600 jobs in the past 18 months, also may be vulnerable as losses in the stock market, falling home values and slower retail spending shrink tax revenues.
Consumers also are reining in spending, which will contribute to cutbacks among retailers, restaurants and hotels, Wobbekind said.
He doesn’t expect professional and business services, a broad category that includes everything from accountants to administrative clerks, to offer much growth either.
“Near-term job seekers should probably grab any job they can,” Kendall said.
More fruitful areas for job hunters to pursue include recreation, health services, alternative energy and education, Kendall said.
To those, Wobbekind adds repair services.
“This business should grow as people repair as opposed to replace,” he said.
As for Garner, he is tired of trying to make sales in an economy that isn’t buying. The 54-year-old plans on returning to school for a degree in information technology or nursing.
Aldo Svaldi: 303-954-1410 or asvaldi@denverpost.com
