A Brookings Institution report released today said that the Denver metro area is one of several metro areas in the nation that is not “well positioned” to recover unless national demand for what Denver industries produce rebounds significantly or there is more diversification into health care, professional services and clean energy.
The report said Denver is one of several U.S. metropolitan areas that has a short-run economic problem related to inadequate demand for workers in their most prevalent industries.
The report adds that Denver, like San Jose, Kansas City and Seattle, does not have a long-run structural problem related to the matching of worker education to what available occupations require.
“The typical job in these areas require less education than what the typical worker possesses,” said Brookings. “However, these economies were more heavily concentrated in declining or more vulnerable industries during the worst of the recession, resulting in significantly more layoffs than better positioned” metro areas.
In Denver and similarly ranked metropolitan areas, more educated workers are more likely to be employed than their less educated workers, but the gap between the two is not as severe as in metropolitan areas with a more pronounced education gap, said Brookings.
However, the report said Colorado Springs is much better situated.
The Colorado Springs metro area doesn’t have a long-run structural problem related to matching of worker education to what available occupations require, said the report.
The economies in Colorado Springs were more heavily concentrated in growing industries or relatively resilient industries during the worst of the recession, mitigating unemployment, said the report.
Colorado Springs is one of more than 25 U.S. metro areas which may be “better positioned to recover as the national economy recovers,” said the report.
The overall assessment of the report was that inadequate demand and inadequate education, related to available occupations, are both hampering economic recovery in U.S. metropolitan areas.
“With a still weakened private sector, strategic public investment and regional economic diversification can help address the first problem,” said the report.
But it warned that even when the economy recovers, longer-term “structural unemployment” will linger in some metro areas because of mismatches between the supply of, and demand for, educated workers.Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com.
