Colorado’s unemployment rate hovered at 8.4 percent last month, according to a federal report issued Friday, down from 9.3 percent a year ago and a mild indicator the state continues to make its way out of the ongoing labor slump, economists say.
Denver’s unemployment numbers were identical to the state’s, though Pueblo retained the state’s highest monthly rate at 10.6 percent.
The monthly report by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics also showed the predictable month-to-month increase in the number of unemployed from December to January, the result of temporary holiday workers who were let go.
“The whole annual decline is a significant value since it’s showing a definitive decrease in those looking for work,” said Patricia Silverstein, president of Development Research Partners in Jefferson County. “What we still need to see, however, are those who fell out of the labor force, who will restart their search as they hear jobs are available.”
Colorado’s jobs picture is actually rosier than expected, though, as revised labor stats released last week show about three times as many jobs were created in 2011 as first expected.
The adjustment was part of an annual benchmarking that occurs when numbers acquired by survey are compared with those gathered by actual reporting to government agencies.
That adjustment meant Colorado, at 1.6 percent job growth instead of the 0.6 percent initially believed, was sixth-best in the nation rather than hovering in the middle of the pack.
Put simply, it was the difference between 7,700 new jobs economists thought were created in the metro Denver job market and the 21,400 that were actually created.
“We were walking with our heads hung low, thinking we’re growing, but slowly,” Silverstein said of the adjusted numbers. “But it turns out we were growing faster than most of the nation and we didn’t know that. We thought it was typical Colorado hanging out in the middle of the pack.”
Nationally the picture was as good, with lower unemployment rates in January in 345 of 372 metropolitan areas, the federal report shows.
Of the hardest-hit locations, 13 showed jobless rates of at least 15 percent, the report shows.
At 13.1 percent, the Las Vegas-Paradise area had the highest unemployment rate last month. The lowest was the Washington, D.C.-Arlington, Va., area at 5.7 percent.
David Migoya: 303-954-1506, dmigoya@denverpost.com
We’re No. 6 in U.S. job growth
Colorado, at 1.6 percent job growth instead of the 0.6 percent initially believed, was sixth-best in the nation rather than hovering in the middle of the pack. Economists thought 7,700 new jobs would be created in the Metro Denver job market — and 21,400 were actually created.
