Pueblo and Colorado Springs recorded some of the strongest personal-income gains in the nation last year, while Boulder and Grand Junction suffered some of the biggest declines, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reported Monday.
“It is another perspective on the pain of this downturn,” said Fiona Sigalla, an economist with the Colorado Legislative Council. “Not only are some people losing their jobs, some of the folks still employed are seeing lower incomes.”
Personal income consists of wages, rents, dividends, interest payments and government transfers such as unemployment insurance. Per-capita figures represent personal income divided by population.
Last year, personal incomes fell in 223 metro areas, rose in 134 and stayed flat in nine, the bureau said.
On a per-capita basis, personal incomes in metro areas last year averaged $40,757, down 2.8 percent from the year before.
Absent government spending, income declines would have been steeper, the bureau said. Private-sector wage growth drove personal-income gains in only five metro areas.
Pueblo ranked 35th among 366 metro areas with per-capita income growth of 1.3 percent.
Increased hiring at the local steel mill and a new wind-tower plant, along with construction of a power plant and a weapons-disposal facility, boosted wages, said Dan Centa, president and chief executive of the Pueblo Economic Development Corp.
“We are seeing the underemployed or unemployed able to find some higher wages,” Centa said.
Colorado Springs had per-capita income growth of 0.6 percent.
At the other extreme, Grand Junction suffered a 6.7 percent drop in per-capita income to $34,197 last year, one of the most severe declines in the country. That drop likely reflected a slowdown in drilling activity and lower royalty payments to owners of oil and gas wells, Sigalla said.
In metro Denver, per-capita personal income declined 4.2 percent to $45,982, an above-average decline that Sigalla attributed to the region’s later entry into the recession.
In Boulder, per-capita personal income fell from $50,058 in 2008 to $47,489 in 2009, a drop of 5.1 percent.
Boulder per-capita income remained high enough to rank 18th in the country. Denver income ranked 24th.
Aldo Svaldi: 303-954-1410 or asvaldi@denverpost.com
