State's economic forecast a mixed bag - Wobbekind, et al - BizWest
Thomas Clayton
State’s economic forecast a mixed bag, experts say
State demographer Kate Watkins speaks Tuesday to an audience at the Boulder Chamber’s Economic Forecast event. Dallas Heltzell/BizWestBOULDER — Loss of federal jobs, fewer people moving in from other states and countries, and people aging out of Colorado’s workforce will combine to paint a different economic picture for the region and state moving forward, experts said at a forum this week.
Brian Lewandowski, executive director of the Business Research Division at the University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business, told an audience at the Boulder Chamber’s Economic Forecast event Tuesday that that the state’s labor force has fallen 0.6% year over year as of December, propelled by a heavy loss of federal jobs. “And our labor force participation rate, something that we have celebrated for so long being top five in the country, we’re now eighth.”
December saw “the lowest number of job openings in Colorado since December 2020,” he said. An aging workforce matters, Colorado state demographer Kate Watkins said, because lower labor-force participation means more competition for talent, it creates a shift in the demand for goods and services, and it creates some radical shifts in the housing market.
It also, she added, creates downward pressure on federal, state and local government tax revenue at the same time it places upward pressure on government expenditures.
“Jobs are people, after all,” she reminded attendees at the University Center for Atmospheric Research. “When we have fewer births and more deaths, that means that net immigration is even more consequential to population growth.”
In Boulder County and Colorado, she said, “we source a lot of our population from other states and other countries,” With reduced immigration rates, she added, she projected growth to slow to 0.4% a year by 2050.
For the first time in her forecasting, she said, she expects more deaths than births in the state by 2047. “When that happens,” she added, “the only way to grow the population is through net migration.”
She predicted “really rapid growth” in the number of people aged 80 and older. “We’re just on the precipice of truly rapid growth” in that demographic, which has repercussions for the health-care system as well as many other parts of the economy.
Watkins also touched on housing affordability, noting that it takes six years worth of median income to buy a medium-priced home in Colorado, up from 2.5 years in 2000.
Richard Wobbekind, associate dean for business and government relations, senior economist and faculty director of the business research division at CU Boulder, painted a picture of “mixed signals” in the economy as a whole, noting that the nation’s trade imbalance has been improving, but added that “on the disappointing side of the ledger, at least in the most recent quarter, we haven’t seen the kind of growth in investment and in inventory buildup that you might hope for in a healthier economy.”
Even with surveys showing lower economic confidence among business leaders, he said, he thinks the nation’s gross domestic product is going to be stronger in 2026 than in 2025, “and that is a cornerstone of what we might expect in the state economy and the local economy.”
Although Wobbekind still expects growth in employment and personal income, he added that “it’s obviously pretty tepid compared to things we’ve said up here in the past.”
 | Tom Clayton Communication and Media Specialist, Public Affairs |
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