Colorado Economic Predictions

Here are some Colorado economic predictions for 2020 from the Leeds School of Business at CU-Boulder.

• Our state will add about 40k new jobs, a growth rate of 1.4%.
• Our state experienced a job growth rate of 1.9% in the first 9 months of 2019 and a 2.5% job growth rate in 2018.
• One reason why job growth will slow is our state's labor-force participation rate of 69.1% can't increase they believe. By the way, our labor-force participation rate is the 4th HIGHEST in the country.
• They expect GDP growth to continue to slow from 3.4% as of the second quarter of 2019. We don't even have 3rd quarter data yet.
• They expect the unemployment rate in CO will average 3.2% in 2020, up from 2.7% in September.
• Business and professional services sector which includes the technology sector will add the most jobs in 2020, with a prediction of 11,700 new jobs. If these jobs are filled by out-of-state workers here comes probably at least 7,000 new homeowners.
• The second strongest jobs sector for 2020 is expected to be trade, transportation, and utilities with 6,300 additional jobs.
• The third strongest jobs sector for 2020 is expected to be education and health services with 5,600 new jobs created.

It's difficult to create a lot of jobs and strong economic growth when your unemployment rate is 2.7%. We need more people to move to our great state for us to see stronger economic growth.