Q: Can you talk about some of the bigger revisions you had to make to your economic forecast?
A: I think the area we were most off in was job growth. Our expectation was that we would really start to see metro Denver and Colorado job figures solidify more than the U.S. and grow a little faster. We were right on the U.S. forecast, but the extent of the employment declines in metro Denver and Colorado has surprised us. I thought Colorado job growth would be below flat and metro Denver would be flat. We are going to be down by another 1 percent. That begs the question why.
Q: Why do you think the Colorado and metro Denver economies are lagging the U.S.?
A: I don’t know if I have a good answer for that other than looking at our industry base. What is struggling that we didn’t think would be struggling? The first category would be professional and business service, which covers everything from engineering, architecture, legal, the whole gamut. Since job growth has been nonexistent across the board, we haven’t seen business services gain.
We are not building anything yet. Even though we are seeing what looks to be a very large increase in new housing units, it is still way off our historic levels. On the commercial side, nothing is going on either.
We have a strong concentration of financial activities, but financial markets are not operating at optimal levels yet. We also don’t have the manufacturing base of other states, which is where a lot of the GDP growth has been. We are challenged.
Q: There are growing fears that the U.S. economy is stalling again. What do you think?
A: If you look at the decade that wasn’t, we added no jobs at the national, state or local level. We had growing population but no type of job growth. That indicates to me we are in the midst of some fundamental shifts, and that can be a very painful process.
But American ingenuity and entrepreneurial capabilities will start to kick in and we will start to see growth in the economy again. It is a slow process. There will be fits and starts along the way. The pain is not gone yet, but I think we do have enough opportunity to keep us moving forward at a slow rate.
Edited for space and clarity by business writer Aldo Svaldi
