Weld County continued to hold the top seed for job growth among large U.S. counties in the third quarter — just as it did in the first and second quarters and for all of 2013.
Weld County increased jobs at an 8.8 percent pace between September 2013 and September 2014, making it the top shooter among the country’s 339 most populated counties, .
Next were Benton County, Ark., and Midland County, Texas, which tied for second with a 7.4 percent gain over that period. The U.S. average was 2 percent.
Adams County moved from the 11th spot in the second quarter to the sixth in the third, with a 5.7 percent annual gain. Denver ranked 13th with a 4.9 percent increase.
Many of the job gains in Weld, and to a lesser degree in Adams and Denver last year, were tied to a surge in drilling activity in the Denver-Julesburg Basin, the state’s most productive petroleum reserve.
Weld County added 8,797 jobs between September 2013 and September 2014, with 2,299 coming in natural resources, which saw a 22.1 percent jump in employment, according to the report.
But the days of Weld County’s dominance may be numbered, predicting a retrenchment because of a halving of oil prices since last summer. Much of that decline came in December and January.
Although unemployment claims aren’t showing a move higher yet in Colorado, the days of robust hiring in the oil patch appear to be over for now.
Drilling permits in Colorado were down 17 percent in December and 20 percent in January from a year earlier, notes Brian Lewandowski, associate research director at the University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business.
About 80 percent of drilling activity in the state comes in Weld and Garfield counties.
Baker-Hughes reported that the number of rigs actively drilling was down 16 percent in January from October but remained above January 2014 levels.
Weld County, however, has a strong agriculture and manufacturing base, which could help absorb some of the losses expected in oil and gas.
Aldo Svaldi: 303-954-1410 or svaldi@denverpost.com
