Colorado’s economic growth is losing ground to other states after more than a decade of being at the head of the pack.
Colorado was in the bottom 10 states for gross domestic product and home price growth during the second quarter of this year, according to a business economic outlook from CU’s Leeds School of Business. The state was in the bottom 20 for personal income and the unemployment rate, the report found.
“Colorado’s performance has slipped in the rankings, demonstrating the difficulty in maintaining growth for a sustained period of time,” the report's authors wrote. “Slower growth, though, may be the new reality for Colorado as population growth, especially through net migration, remains slow, creating headwinds for labor force and job growth.”
To put the state’s stagnant population growth in context, migration to Colorado accounted for 19,200 people in 2023, the most recent data available. By contrast, Colorado averaged a net migration of 46,000 people annually during the 2010s, according to the report.
The state is still adding jobs, but the pace has slowed considerably. In 2023, Colorado gained 72,300 jobs as the pandemic recovery boosted job growth to 2.5 percent. This year, CU economists estimate the state will have added 46,800 jobs for a rate of 1.6 percent. In 2025, the forecast is for 36,700 jobs, which is 1.2 percent growth.
Colorado’s payroll gains have been uneven lately, with some sectors doing much better than others. The gains in 2024 have been concentrated in government, education, health services, and professional and business services. At the other end of the spectrum, construction, manufacturing and information actually lost jobs this year, according to the report.
CU projects job losses will turn to gains next year for construction and manufacturing. The information sector is forecast to keep losing jobs due to hard times for telecommunications companies and software publishing.
