Looking for a place to work?
Head to Eads, where the Kiowa County Press recently included Help Wanted ads for heavy equipment operators and a short-order cook. Or La Plata County, where there are plenty of restaurant and ski resort jobs to go around, which is a good thing since you’ll need to hold down a few jobs at a time to pay rent in Durango.
Recent unemployment numbers show that the economic malaise spreading through Colorado is affecting Broomfield more than Baca County, Adams County more than Alamosa.
In other words, it’s not a dust bowl out there. In the current economic downturn, the worst stories are in the cities but, so far, it’s business as usual in many of Colorado’s smaller, rural counties.
“Tell them to come on out, we even have land that’s pretty cheap,” said Dennis Pearson, head of the Kiowa County Chamber of Commerce. “We just wouldn’t want them all to come out and then go on welfare.”
Non-seasonally adjusted numbers for December show unemployment rates for less-populated counties across the state — from Jackson to Garfield to San Miguel — are much lower than the state average. And those rates are considerably lower than Denver, Adams and El Paso counties.
In Kiowa County, for example, December’s non-seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 3.7 percent. In Denver at the same time, that number was 7 percent.
On the surface, the rural employment story is easy to figure out: Commodity prices for food, particularly food grown in Colorado, are holding steady. Foreclosures have battered exurbs, like Brighton and unincorporated Adams County, harder than places like Walden and Salida.
Rural areas rely on farming and service industries, like the Wal-Mart in Lamar or the JCPenney in Sterling, but they are also boosted by jobs that don’t go away very easily – hospitals, nursing homes, schools and local government.
And everyone — government and small businesses — is used to operating thinly.
Pearson, who is also the director of social services in Kiowa County, said five people work in his office. “There is no way that one of them could go,” he said. “We couldn’t operate the federal programs that we need to operate.”
From a different landscape and career perspective, Stacey Gollobith agreed.
“We don’t have anywhere to cut fat, we’re in bare bones in the winter time anyway,” said Gollobith, manager of the Antlers Inn and the River Rock Café in Walden, situated in north Jackson County. “You have to have four cooks, two housekeepers and six waitresses. That’s it.”
Rural areas also have a few attributes that cities do not: Seasonal labor and hearty farmers accustomed to weathering downturns, so to speak.
Philip Maes, director of human services in Chaffee County, sees people flee the Salida area at the end of every summer when rafting and mountain recreation slows down.
“They can’t afford to just live here if they don’t have a job,” Maes said.
But many rural folks insist they are not impervious to this recession, they may simply feel the effects of it a little later than Denver.
While the unemployment rates are lower than metro-area counties, they are still higher than they were a year ago.
Food stamp applications are up in many rural counties, including Chaffee and La Plata. Maes said a lot of people have jobs in the Salida area — they just aren’t getting enough hours to put dinner on the table.
Pastor James Nash at Trinity Lutheran Church in Sterling said he’s heard of a few congregants getting laid off at banks in Logan County. The church is already anticipating lower offerings in six months and is looking at ways to cut non-essential services.
And at the River Rock Café in Walden, Gollobith said business had been steady throughout the winter – until last Monday.
“It was really weird,” Gollobith said. “It was like we had been doing very well and then, all of the sudden, someone just closed the door.”
Allison Sherry: 303-954-1377 or asherry@denverpost.com
