DENVER — The economy hasn’t inspired the most confidence over the last few months. Food and home prices are up, and the market has been all over the place but new numbers from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics show the Denver metro area is faring better than the national average in terms of its prices.
It’s a valuable lesson in perception vs. reality.
“I think the food challenges you see, it saw had a lot to do with like the bird flu issue, which hit Colorado worse,” supply-chain professor at the University of Denver Jack Buffington said.
“Stuff that I used to buy six months ago for like $1.29 a pound are now $1.99 or more,” Evelyn, a woman we spoke with outside of Union Station, said.
While the pinch is not welcome to monthly budgets, new numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show between March 2024 and March 2025, all prices in metro Denver rose 1.9% compared to an average of 2.4% in cities across the country.
For food, the price increases were about the same: 3.3% for metro Denver and 3% for the U.S. city average.
However in metro Denver, energy prices fell 8.4% compared to only 3.3% in most cities.
“We have decent natural gas, we get a lot of coal from Wyoming, and then we have the oil coming from the Gulf. And you think about all those factors together, we're in a really perfect place from a supply chain standpoint,” Buffington said.
Overall spending per household was considerably higher in the metro area, though — $94,236 compared to $75,172 for the rest of our country’s cities. The biggest reasons why won’t come as a surprise. Coloradans spend nearly $10,000 more annually on housing than the rest of the country, and just $3,000 more on transportation, according to the data.
It has meant changes for families to keep the budget balanced.
“I'm on a fixed income,” Evelyn said. “I don't get any more money, so I have to be making adjustments in way I eat, you know, and what I can do socially. And it's scary.”
Unemployment can also be scary for Coloradans.
Those same numbers showed unemployment in metro Denver rose at triple the rate of the rest of the country — 0.9% for the metro area and 0.3% for the rest of major U.S. cities.
