Aldo Svaldi – The News Herald

Colorado’s workforce has been shrinking since September — and that could spell trouble

Aldo Svaldi — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 13:03:17 +0000

Buried deep within an otherwise routine state employment report for December is a troubling mystery. Colorado is starting to see an alarmingly large number of workers go missing.

Colorado’s labor force shrank 0.6% year-over-year last month, a monthly decline matching the pace seen during the Great Recession. After flatlining in August, the labor force, those working or looking for work, has been retreating since September. For the year, 20,280 people vanished from its ranks, mostly in the fourth quarter.

That has never happened outside a severe recession or economic shock like the COVID-19 pandemic.

From April 2020 to March 2021, workers removed themselves from the labor force in record numbers. Giving up a paycheck to avoid landing on a respirator seemed like a fair trade-off to many older workers during the pandemic. The defections were unprecedented, triggering a 3.4% drop in the labor force in July 2020. But they were short-lived. People returned once restrictions eased and vaccines became available.

Another 12-month stretch of a draining labor pool occurred from September 2009 to August 2010 during the housing crash and Great Recession. People couldn’t easily replace the jobs they lost. Many gave up trying. That contributed to annual declines of 0.7% and 0.6% during the worst months.

The mother of all Colorado labor force deflations happened from July 1985 to June 1989. It started during a severe oil and gas downturn, which was followed by a lending crisis, which was followed by a collapse in commercial real estate and home values. It was such an ugly period economically that companies and people packed their bags and left the state in droves.

The year-over-year drops reached a high of 0.9% and 0.8% in 1989, but most months ran lower, with some positive months mixed in. But all those Colorado natives kept graduating from high school and college. The unemployment rose to as high as 8.4% in December 1985 and January 1986. The workers who stayed gutted it out. Better times returned in the 1990s.

There is no health crisis keeping people home, no recession triggering major layoffs and no collapse in a pillar of the state economy. So what might be driving the decline in the number of workers?

The easy out is to blame statistical noise. The household survey — used to determine the size of the labor force and the unemployment rate — is subject to revisions. The federal government shutdown in October might have mucked things up. Below-average snowfalls might have reduced demand for resort workers. The list goes on.

But the decline is large and accelerating, and it started before the shutdown. It likely reflects a real shift, said Brian Lewandowski, executive director of the Business Research Division at the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado Boulder.

“I think the current softening could be a mixture of both the market (demographics) and policy,” he said.

One demographic piece involves more workers retiring. The mirror doesn’t lie. Colorado’s population is getting older. The long-predicted silver tsunami may finally be sucking workers out of the labor pool. But aging is a slow-moving trend, not akin to an earthquake.

Migration is a more plausible force behind what is happening. Colorado lost 12,100 more people than it gained from other states in the year through June 30, according to a population update Tuesday from the U.S. Census Bureau.

That trend may have accelerated in the second half of the year based on what is happening to the labor force. Colorado’s net domestic migration is down sharply since the pandemic. Blame higher housing costs and fewer job opportunities. More longtime residents appear to be picking up and moving out. Last year, Colorado became one of five states with significantly more outbound than inbound moves, according to a survey by United Van Lines.

From the reopening of the economy following the pandemic through 2024, Colorado saw big increases in the number of people arriving from other countries. Migration to Colorado historically has been 80% domestic and 20% international. That ratio flipped this decade, according to the State Demography Office.

In the 12 months through June 30, the state’s net international migration of 15,356 was enough to offset the loss of 12,100 domestically last year. The combined number was weak, but it wasn’t negative. For the last several years, it appears international migration helped mask the weakness the state was facing on the domestic side.

And the mask has been removed. This is where policy shock comes into play.

Voters, upset with the immigration surge and inflation, elected Donald Trump to office. His administration has moved quickly to shut down flows across the border and remove illegal immigrants. The administration has also tightened down on legal channels of immigration, requiring more vetting and in-person interviews, delaying application processing and even reversing earlier green card approvals.

“The slowdown in U.S. population growth is largely due to a historic decline in net international migration, which dropped from 2.7 million to 1.3 million in the period from July 2024 through June 2025,” said Christine Hartley, assistant division chief for Estimates and Projections at the Census Bureau, in a news release Tuesday. “With births and deaths remaining relatively stable compared to the prior year, the sharp decline in net international migration is the main reason for the slower growth rate we see today.”

Lewandowski notes that the labor force shrank in a dozen states in December, and 19 states had growth rates below 1%. Wyoming led the country on the downside with a 2.5% decline. Vermont and Wisconsin also dropped more than 2%. Illinois, Virginia and Connecticut had declines above 1%.

“I certainly think the lack of international migration has to be playing a role as we don’t have replacements,” said Richard Wobbekind, a senior economist with the Business Research Division, of the shrinking labor force.

More older workers are retiring each year. Years of a subdued birth rate mean fewer young adults are entering the workforce. Colorado has become less attractive to young adults living in other states, and with each passing year, there are fewer of them to recruit. Now immigration has been throttled.

That may explain why the state’s unemployment rate has managed to drop significantly despite fairly weak job growth. It fell from 4.6% a year ago to 3.8%. Normally, a falling unemployment rate is associated with a strong job market. But job gains are a little over a third of their historical pace since 1990. The last two years have been the weakest outside of a recession.

Over the past year, nonfarm payrolls increased by 23,000, with 18,900 of those jobs coming in the private sector and governments adding 4,100 jobs, according to the December employment report from the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment.

That is only a little better than the 22,100 jobs added in 2024. The pace of hiring, at 0.8%, is one of the slowest outside the last three recessions, but it was double the U.S. rate of 0.4%.

Job growth was enough to push the number of nonfarm workers in the state above 3 million for the first time, according to the report. The U.S. Census Bureau estimated that as of June 30, the state’s population had crossed 6 million people. One out of every two residents in the state is collecting a paycheck from an employer who pays premiums for unemployment insurance.

A little over two-thirds of residents over age 16 in Colorado, 66.9% to be precise, described themselves as working or actively looking for work in December. That ratio, called the state’s labor force participation rate, has been falling for two years and is now at its lowest level since October 2020. It remains one of the highest rates in the country.

Wobbekind said he doesn’t think the drop in participation explains the shrinkage of the workforce. People aren’t dropping out like they tend to do during a downturn.

Instead, the big drop in migration, both domestic and international, might be influencing the share of the overall population that is in the prime working age range. And if working-age adults are leaving, that might explain why the labor force is shrinking.

Colorado sees slowest population gain since the oil bust of the late 1980s

Aldo Svaldi — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 13:42:23 +0000

Colorado’s population rose by 24,059 people last year, the weakest increase measured since 1990, according to an update Tuesday from the U.S. Census Bureau. The gain, however, was enough to push the state’s population above 6 million for the first time.

Thirty-five years ago, Colorado was among a handful of oil and gas states experiencing a severe recession because of low energy prices, and from 1986 to 1990, more people left the state to pursue better opportunities elsewhere than moved in.

The state economy is chugging along this time around — not great, but not horrible. Yet, it appears high housing costs and slower job growth may be exerting a strong outward push. Last year, the state saw a weakening in its strongest contributor to population growth since the pandemic — immigration.

Nationally, President Donald Trump’s push to curb immigration a year ago lowered the country’s population growth rate from 1% in 2024 to 0.5% in 2025. Colorado’s decrease was even larger, going from a 1.29% growth rate to a 0.4%, a two-thirds decline.

The U.S. Census Bureau measures changes in population from July 1 to June 30 every year in what is called a “vintage.” The strictest immigration policies were in place for only half that period, but they were enough to help push net immigration from 2.8 million people in the prior period to 1.3 million.

If that trend continues, the annual gain from net immigration in the next count, mid-2026, could drop to only 321,000 people, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

Colorado’s gain included 20,608 from natural increases, or births minus deaths. Net migration contributed 3,256 residents, with net immigration of 15,356 offsetting a net decline of 12,100 from domestic migration.

The country had an estimated population of nearly 342 million compared to 340 million in the 2024 count. The state’s population rose from 5,988,502 to 6,012,561. Colorado remains the 20th most populous state, behind Maryland and ahead of Wisconsin.

The downward shift was more pronounced in other states. California went from a gain of 232,000 residents in 2024 to a loss of 9,500 people in 2025, due primarily to reduced immigration. Hawaii, New Mexico, Vermont and West Virginia also lost population.

New York added only 1,008 people after a drop in immigration from 207,000 to 95,600. Florida saw its domestic migration drop by nearly two-thirds and immigration dropped by more than half, but it still had one of the largest overall gains, along with Texas and North Carolina.

South Carolina, Idaho and North Carolina had the highest year-over-year population growth rates, ranging from 1.3% to 1.5%.

“Many of these states are going to show even smaller growth when we get to next year,” Brookings demographer William Frey predicted Tuesday.

In 1990, the state added 18,840 residents. But the population is now 80% larger, so the comparison isn’t an even one. Although the pandemic slowed growth, the last time the rate of population growth was so low was in 1989. Only half done, this decade is shaping up to be the slowest the state has seen for growth since the 1980s.

Since 2020, Colorado has seen a net 17,729 people arrive from other U.S. states. By contrast, net immigration, people arriving from other countries, surged by 130,218. Net migration, which historically is 80% domestic and 20% international, has flipped the other way and then some.

Little on the horizon suggests that slower population growth will reverse itself, especially with fewer immigrants and now more outflows than inflows domestically. Demographic winter, long predicted, could be arriving earlier than expected.

On the plus side demographically, births rose 4.6% to 65,380 from the 2023-2024 period, and are now at the highest pace since 2017. Deaths remained fairly flat, rising by 59 or 0.1% from the prior period. That said, the holiday that death can take is limited, given the state’s aging population.

The State Demography Office had forecast a population gain of 33,154 and net migration of 13,568 for 2025. It was off by nearly 10,000, due almost entirely to weaker net migration. Last year, it had cut population forecasts through 2029 by 120,000 residents, and it may need to make more revisions, especially if immigration dries up even more.

What caused domestic migration to turn negative, given the absence of a recession? When someone arrives in a state from another country, they are counted as an international migrant. But if they move to another state, they are counted as a domestic migrant, according to the State Demography Office.

A lot of the international arrivals to Colorado between 2022 and 2025 came on humanitarian grounds and were likely headed elsewhere. And the Census Bureau, which makes no distinction between legal and illegal immigration, has gotten better at counting those arriving as refugees or under a protected status than in the past.

“At least some portion of the domestic out-migration from Colorado is made up of recently arrived international migrants,” the State Demography Office said in a release discussing the Census numbers.

That means a drop in immigration could translate into better numbers on domestic migration in the next estimate.

But an annual survey from United Van Lines, whose customers tend to be older and higher-income households, reported that Colorado last year had become a “strong outbound” state, one of only five, for the first time since 1990. For much of the 2010s, Colorado was a “strong inbound” state, before becoming more balanced after the pandemic.

That would suggest that it isn’t only the newest residents who departed, but also more established and wealthier households who were picking up and leaving.

Slower growth should allow the state to catch up on its housing shortfall, and if population gains are weak enough, reduced demand could even push rents and home prices lower. Apartment rents in Denver are already back to 2022 levels.

Governments could catch up on much-needed infrastructure, but their budgets may also take a hit given that population growth, along with inflation, determines how much additional spending they are allowed each year.

Broomfield economist Gary Horvathsaid slower population gains and slower job gains tend to correlate with each other. Normally, a lack of job opportunities results in slower population growth. But he suggests the situation might be reversed.

“With the exception of health care, in 2025, there was weak job growth in many sectors. If a person is needed to fill a job, and we don’t have that person, the labor market will struggle — not from a lack of demand, but from a lack of supply,” he said.

SBA administrator orders regional offices to exit “sanctuary cities”

Aldo Svaldi — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 18:02:45 +0000

The U.S. Small Business Administration will pull regional offices out of cities with immigrant-friendly policies like Denver, one of several changes new SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler detailed in a “Day One” memo on Monday.

“To better serve Main Streets across America, especially in rural areas, SBA will relocate regional offices currently based in sanctuary cities to less costly, more accessible locations in communities that comply with federal immigration law,” the memo states.

Denver is home to the SBA’s Region VIII, which covers Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, North Dakota and South Dakota. Denver Mayor Mike Johnston has been an early and vocal opponent of the administration’s immigration policies, making a relocation likely.

The Colorado District Office, established in 1953, is in the federally-owned U.S. Customs House at 721 19th St. That makes the impact of a departure on the city’s oversupplied office market more limited compared to the departure of a federal tenant in leased space.

SBA offices are also instructed to comply with several other administration priorities, including all full-time staff returning to the office, elimination of the SBA’s Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility; a pause to the Green Lender Initiative; and pausing all grants that “do not comply with President Trump’s executive orders.”

Some of the other priorities that Loeffler laid out are:

Eliminating unnecessary regulations that complicate obtaining SBA assistance, improving customer service and reducing the set aside for disadvantaged businesses under the 8(a) contracting program from 15% to 5%.
A “Made in America” agenda to promote scaling innovative manufacturing and technology startups in the U.S. and a rebranding of the Office of International Trade into the Office of Manufacturing and Trade.
Conducting an agency-wide financial audit to address delinquencies, defaults, and charge-offs on various loan programs and reviving the agency’s dormant collection programs.
Restricting “hostile foreign nationals” from accessing SBA assistance, especially those with ties to the Chinese Communist Party, and barring anyone without proper authorization to live in the country from obtaining SBA assistance.
A zero-tolerance policy against fraud, including the establishment of a Fraud Working Group and the appointment of a Fraud Czar to “identify, stop, and claw back criminally obtained funds on behalf of American taxpayers – working across agencies to prevent fraud.”

The SBA Office of Inspector General estimates that more than $200 billion, or about 17% of the $1.2 trillion administered through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) loan programs was obtained via fraud. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Colorado has been a leader in chasing down cases of SBA Fraud.

“From day one, we will uphold the highest standards of accountability, performance, and integrity, where taxpayer dollars will be safeguarded, not squandered. We will streamline operations, drive efficiency, and ensure programs deliver real results,” Loeffler said.

The SBA works with participating lenders, guaranteeing them repayment on loans that are otherwise difficult to underwrite and it also provides emergency assistance to help small businesses stay afloat during a disaster. In Colorado, the SBA issued 1,798 loans under its 7(a) program worth $936.7 million last fiscal year.

SBA administrator orders regional offices to exit “sanctuary cities”

Aldo Svaldi — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 18:02:45 +0000

Some of the other priorities that Loeffler laid out are:

Eliminating unnecessary regulations that complicate obtaining SBA assistance, improving customer service and reducing the set aside for disadvantaged businesses under the 8(a) contracting program from 15% to 5%.
A “Made in America” agenda to promote scaling innovative manufacturing and technology startups in the U.S. and a rebranding of the Office of International Trade into the Office of Manufacturing and Trade.
Conducting an agency-wide financial audit to address delinquencies, defaults, and charge-offs on various loan programs and reviving the agency’s dormant collection programs.
Restricting “hostile foreign nationals” from accessing SBA assistance, especially those with ties to the Chinese Communist Party, and barring anyone without proper authorization to live in the country from obtaining SBA assistance.
A zero-tolerance policy against fraud, including the establishment of a Fraud Working Group and the appointment of a Fraud Czar to “identify, stop, and claw back criminally obtained funds on behalf of American taxpayers – working across agencies to prevent fraud.”

Robocalls and spam still a scourge. Some carriers get an F for protecting consumers.

Aldo Svaldi — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 13:00:55 +0000

Phone companies represent a critical line of defense when it comes to warning about or blocking robocalls and robotexts. But most telecom carriers are failing to adequately protect their customers, which is contributing to a rebound in the number of spam messages, according to a report from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

About 2 billion unwanted calls and 19 billion unwanted texts go out in the U.S. every month. After a short-lived decline in 2022 and 2023, spam messages increased again last year despite numerous regulations making them illegal. Last year, about 92% of Americans said they received a spam call and 86% received a spam text, according to Truecaller’s U.S. Spam and Scam Report.

“It’s unconscionable that these multi-bazillion-dollar companies don’t use every preventative measure available while scammers rip off innocent, vulnerable consumers every single day,” said Danny Katz, executive director of the CoPIRG Foundation, a statewide consumer watchdog group that held a news conference on the topic in Denver.

Messages range from claims of blocked package deliveries to warnings of unpaid taxes and potential arrest to seemingly innocent texts from unknown numbers asking things like, “Are you still coming tonight?”

People waste countless hours answering unwanted messages or trying to sort out what is a legitimate communication. At a minimum, they have their concentration broken as they try to work, relax or spend time with family, Katz said.

Beyond being an annoyance, about 56 million people in 2023 reported losing money because of bogus calls and texts. Things are so bad that Teresa Murray with the U.S. PIRG Education Fund urges consumers to never respond to anyone they weren’t expecting to hear from. Period.

“Assume every unexpected call or text or email has bad intentions,” Murray said. Never provide personal information and never give out money because of an unsolicited or unexpected call or text. If uncertain, hang up, research the legitimate number of the business in question, and then call back.

Katz said even responding lets the sender know the number is monitored and could result in more spam messages. If someone is concerned about a spam text, they can forward it to 7726, which will block the sender.

U.S. PIRG reviewed what steps the nation’s largest two dozen telecom firms, cellular and landline, were taking to protect their customers and only three earned an A grade — Charter/Spectrum, Comcast/Xfinity and Nextlink. Another five earned B’s overall — AT&T, Lumen/Centurylink, Mediacom, T-Mobile and WOW!. Cox Communications, U.S. Cellular, and Windstream received C grades.

Half of the carriers received a failing grade for their efforts, including Verizon and Dish/Boost Mobile.

In September 2009, the Federal Communications Commission declared pre-recorded telemarketing calls illegal without the written consent of consumers, and has passed other regulations over the years to stem the flow of unwanted calls and messages. In 2019, Congress passed a law requiring phone companies to use technology to combat robocalls.

But the unsolicited calls and texts keep on coming. Compliance has been lackluster and some telecom companies actively assist scammers, making money off their traffic. On Dec. 11, the Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force, made up of 51 state attorneys general, including Colorado’s Phil Weiser, issued a warning to KWK Communications, Inbound Communications, AKA Management, and CallVox LLC and their owners that they were under investigation and faced potential legal action.

“Unwanted robocalls are a scourge, and I am committed to protecting consumers from them,” Weiser said in a news release in December. “With the rise of artificial intelligence and scams becoming increasingly difficult to spot, voice service providers must be vigilant against bad actors using their legitimate systems to spread scams and fraud.”

Former safeguards, like caller ID, no longer offer protection. Scammers can “spoof” or imitate numbers of legitimate government agencies, local businesses and existing contacts. Artificial intelligence technology can clone voices, and then make convincing requests for money over the phone, typically to help loved ones supposedly in trouble.

Massive data breaches have made names, addresses, and other personal information widely available. Just because a caller can tell someone their Social Security number doesn’t make them legitimate.

That has made it more urgent than ever for carriers to step up and stop the calls and texts from going out in the first place, Katz said.

Robocalls and spam still a scourge. Some carriers get an F for protecting consumers.

Aldo Svaldi — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 13:00:55 +0000

Half of the carriers received a failing grade for their efforts, including Verizon and Dish/Boost Mobile.

Massive data breaches have made names, addresses, and other personal information widely available. Just because a caller can tell someone their Social Security number doesn’t make them legitimate.

That has made it more urgent than ever for carriers to step up and stop the calls and texts from going out in the first place, Katz said.

US economy should power through a contentious election cycle, top economist predicts

Aldo Svaldi — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 18:18:04 +0000

The presidential election remains a toss-up and so does the future control of Congress, which could swing to either party or remain divided.

But the direction of the U.S. economy looks a little more certain irrespective of who wins, predicted Mohamed El-Erian, president of Queens College at Cambridge University and a closely followed economist, during a speech Monday morning at the Mortgage Bankers Association annual convention in Denver.

“There’s a 70% chance that we soft land or do better,” El-Erian said, defining better as an economy that “gets bigger, but not hotter.”

A sharp rise in interest rates to combat inflation caused the U.S. mortgage industry in 2023 to suffer its worst year in 25 years, said Mike Fratantoni, chief economist with the MBA. Existing home sales have also slowed sharply, although from elevated levels.

But the larger economy has held up, defying numerous predictions of a recession, including some from El-Erian in 2022. The U.S. represents the “cleanest dirty shirt” in a global laundry basket of powerful but struggling economies like the U.K., the European Union and China, he said.

The U.S. economy has started to see rising productivity, an important measure of efficiency, after years of stagnation. Artificial intelligence technology should help accelerate that trend in the years ahead.

“We haven’t understood how powerful this technology was,” he said.

The U.S. economy has endured a “bumpy journey to a better destination,” he said, and it should eventually get there — provided major policy mistakes or troubles abroad don’t drag it down.

El-Erian said the risk of a recession, while moderated, hasn’t been eliminated and stands at around 30% for the U.S.

Lower-income households are under growing financial stress and they could pull back spending. Sluggish growth abroad could weigh on performance domestically.

A third trigger would be a policy mistake, either from the Federal Reserve as it combats inflation or by the next presidential administration.

El-Erian argued the Fed made a mistake in cutting the target on the federal funds rate that banks charge each other for overnight loans by 50 basis points last month, double the amount the markets had expected. Instead of bond and mortgage rates moving lower, the opposite happened after economic indicators came in stronger than expected.

“Fed policy should become like watching paint dry,” he advised. Rate cuts should be a consistent 25 basis points until the federal funds rate, now at 4.75% to 5%, reaches 3.5%.

Both presidential candidates also risk policy mistakes based on their current platforms, he said.

Tariffs are a powerful tool that former President Donald Trump has emphasized as a way to boost federal revenues and reduce trade imbalances. But any tool, if overused, loses its effectiveness. Relying too heavily on tariffs could usher in a “world of stagflation,” he warned.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ economic tool of choice is industrial policy. While helpful to address a market failure, it is a poor substitute for the private sector and could also trigger stagflation, or a situation where prices are increasing but the economy isn’t growing, El-Erian said.

He expected that whoever wins will moderate their stance once in office.