Colorado’s unemployment rate ticked up to 7.9 percent in March as more people sought work and employers shed 1,600 nonfarm jobs, the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment reported Friday.
The mixed report showed a fairly flat labor market, as has been the case for five out of the past six months, but one that may soon turn the corner, said Alexandra Hall, the state’s chief labor economist.
“You are starting to see the signs are there that we are going to see employment increase in the next few months,” she said.
Hiring for the 2010 census helped the government sector add a net 2,300 jobs, with more hires expected to show up in the April report. Those workers will survey households next month that didn’t return their forms.
That gain, however, wasn’t enough to prevent a net loss of 1,600 nonfarm jobs overall.
Construction had the heaviest losses, 2,600 jobs, despite warmer weather that usually leads to more hiring.
That loss, however, wasn’t large compared with some of the declines the industry has suffered in past months, said Michael Gifford, executive director of the Associated General Contractors of Colorado.
One anomaly in the report was that 1,600 more people described themselves as employed in March than in February, despite employers cutting a similar number of jobs.
So where did those people find work? One explanation is that they are self-employed or working under the table. The numbers are also small enough that they could simply represent statistical variations, Hall said.
As to why more people are rejoining the labor force, it could reflect people finishing programs and courses they took to retool their skills, Hall said.
The unemployment rate is 0.2 points higher than February’s 7.7 percent rate, which also was the unemployment rate in March 2009. Twenty-four states, including Colorado, recorded over-the- month unemployment-rate increases, 17 states had declines and nine states had no rate change, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.
Aldo Svaldi: 303-954-1410 or asvaldi@denverpost.com
