Metro Denver’s unemployment rate cracked 8 percent in March — the seventh month of successive increases, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The 8.2 percent rate, not adjusted for seasonal effects, is up from 7.9 percent in February and 4.8 percent a year earlier, according to a bureau report issued Wednesday.
And economists aren’t optimistic about the coming months.
“We are predicting the unemployment rate will stay high for this year,” said Natalie Mullis, Colorado Legislative Council chief economist.
The rate — representing a 70 percent increase in the number of unemployed people since last year, or about 47,000 workers — is the highest in bureau statistics recorded in Denver dating to 1990, the report shows.
But unemployment levels can vary widely by geography and are typically higher in urban areas with faster population growth than rural ones with stable or declining populations, Mullis said.
Grand Junction had the biggest jump in unemployment — rising from 3.9 percent in March 2008 to 8.2 percent in March 2009 — despite a 2 percent increase in nonfarm jobs there last year.
Pueblo’s unemployment rate — 9.1 percent — ranked the worst of any metro area in the state. It’s that city’s highest rate since March 1993.
Boulder ranked lowest at 6.3 percent, the only metro area in Colorado with a jobless rate below the state’s 7.9 percent unadjusted average.
Payrolls decreased in every other metro area, including a 3.7 percent drop in Denver.
On a positive note, Colorado’s cities are faring better than 109 metro areas nationally where unemployment was above 10 percent in March.
Aldo Svaldi: 303-954-1410 or asvaldi@denverpost.com
