Colorado’s unemployment rate continued to tick up, and private-sector hiring turned negative again last month, according to an update from the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment on Friday.
Employers in the state added 1,500 net new jobs last month, but governments did the heavy lifting, adding 1,700 jobs. One of the biggest surprises in the report came in downward revisions to September job counts, which turned an initial gain of 1,500 jobs into a decline of 100.
“The weak data for October was not a surprise; however, it was disturbing that the September data, originally up 1,500 workers, was revised downward by 1,600,” said Broomfield economist Gary Horvath in an email.
Private-sector employers shed a net 200 jobs last month, with the biggest losses coming in construction, down 1,400 jobs, and trade, transportation and utilities, down 900 jobs. Private sector gains were strongest in leisure and hospitality, where employment rose by 1,500 jobs.
For the past year, employers in the state have added 33,100 non-farm jobs, with governments adding 20,100 jobs and leisure and hospitality adding 17,000.
The number of unemployed workers rose by 2,400 last month on a seasonally adjusted basis, which helped take the state’s unemployment rate from 3.2% in September to 3.3% in October. Colorado’s rate remains historically low, and it is below the U.S. unemployment rate in October of 3.9%.
Colorado ranks in the middle among states, tied with Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee for the 25th-lowest unemployment rate, said Ryan Gedney, a senior labor economist with the state.
Job hunters tend to gravitate to states with tighter labor markets. Colorado isn’t the strongest state when it comes to unemployment — Maryland is. Nor is it the weakest, a title that Nevada claims.
Private-sector job losses are tied mostly to higher interest rates, which are key to the Federal Reserve’s strategy of trying to fight inflation by cooling the economy. Firms in finance, real estate and construction are getting hit especially hard.
“We have been seeing declines in construction over the past year of 3.9% or 7,200 jobs lost. A lot of that is being driven by the interest rate environment,” Gedney said.
The state continues to see strong employment gains in professional, scientific and technical services, where wages tend to be higher, and the leisure and hospitality sector, hotels and restaurants, continues to rebound from the beating it took during the pandemic. Public-sector hiring, mostly by local governments and schools, is filling in the gap.
