DENVER — Colorado lost 11,000 nonfarm payroll jobs last year, according to a grim revised jobs report from the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment.
Brian Lewandowski, executive director Business Research Division at the Leeds School of Business at CU Boulder, said it is unusual for Colorado to lose jobs outside of recessionary periods.
Since 2000, Colorado has only recorded job losses in 2002 and 2003 during the tech burst, 2009 and 2010 during the financial crisis, and in 2020 because of COVID, Lewandowski said.
► Revised Colorado jobs report shows state lost 11K jobs over the last year:
The revised data shows the state lost jobs instead of adding them, with the private sector losing 7,000 jobs and the government losing 4,000 jobs since January 2025. Colorado's rate of job growth over the past year is -0.4 percent, which falls below the national rate of 0.2 percent.
The state's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate increased from a revised 3.8 percent in December to 3.9 percent in January. The number of unemployed individuals grew by 1,200 to 126,300. Despite the increase, Colorado's unemployment rate remains below the national rate of 4.3 percent.
The size of Colorado's labor force dropped by 5,200 individuals in January to 3,248,800. The share of Coloradans participating in the labor force decreased to 66.8 percent, marking the lowest labor force participation rate since September 2020.
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