Colorado’s unemployment rate climbed to 8.6 percent in November, but there was a silver lining: The state’s economy added jobs for the third consecutive month.
The seeming contradiction between those two facts resulted from more Coloradans returning to the labor force in November, said Alexandra Hall, the state’s chief labor economist. The labor force grew by about 4,500 people during the month, accounting for 40 percent of the workforce growth so far this year.
The likely explanation is that unemployed Coloradans who stopped looking for work during and after the recession reignited their job searches with the prospect of holiday employment, Hall said.
There also have been solid signs of economic recovery, however slow.
“People are smart. They know that if they lost a job and their neighbor lost his job and they’re reading about job losses in the newspaper, then putting a lot of effort into a job search might be pointless so why not do something else?” she said. “They opt out of the labor force for a while. At some point those people want to come back, usually when they see things have begun to stabilize.”
Still, high unemployment is likely to linger in Colorado and elsewhere. The national unemployment rate stood at 9.8 percent in November.
The Colorado economy added 3,800 jobs in November, bringing the total jobs added this year to 12,300. Education and health-services sectors showed the biggest increase in jobs for the year, growing at 8.3 percent.
Greg Griffin: 303-954-1241 or ggriffin@denverpost.com
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Job gains for some states
WASHINGTON — The national unemployment rate has been stuck above 9.5 percent for more than a year, yet some states have made strides. Two states with little else in common — New Hampshire and Alabama — have seen the steepest drops in unemployment in the 12 months that ended in November.
New Hampshire has added jobs in a broad range of industries, including manufacturing, education and health care, and leisure and hospitality.
Alabama has a growing auto-manufacturing base.
The state’s 5.4 percent unemployment rate is fourth- lowest in the country, the Labor Department said Friday in a report on state figures. The Associated Press
