When workers start “vanishing,” it is not a Scooby-Doo mystery. The Denver Post says Colorado’s labor force shrank year-over-year in December, with the slide starting back in September.
Statewide, the labor force is down 0.6% from a year ago, with 20,280 people leaving the ranks of those working or looking for work. That kind of drop usually shows up during a true economic gut-punch, not in a supposedly normal stretch.
The Bullet Point Brief
- Colorado’s labor force shrank 0.6% year-over-year in December.
- The labor force has been retreating since September after flatlining in August.
- Over the year, 20,280 people left the labor force, mostly in the fourth quarter.
- Analysts point to retirements, migration shifts, and policy as possible drivers.
- Unemployment fell from 4.6% to 3.8% even as job growth stayed fairly weak.
My Bottom Line
More bad news for the Colorado economy, and you can bet the Denver/Boulder Bubble will treat it like a “data quirk” right up until your kid can’t find an apprenticeship and your contractor can’t hire a crew.
Let’s not pretend this came out of nowhere. We continue to reap the, um, rewards of 7 years of total democrat domination at the state capitol, where the winning strategy is usually more mandates, more paperwork, and then acting shocked when reality shows up with a bill.
Are Colorado workers just throwing in the towel? Some might be retiring, sure. But when working-age folks start leaving and opportunities feel thinner, that is not “vibes,” that is policy meeting consequences.
If you make a state harder to live in and harder to build in, people with options take those options somewhere else.
You can’t regulate your way to a bigger workforce, no matter how many committees clap for it.
Here’s the fix: stop treating employers like piñatas, stop making housing and energy artificially expensive, and start measuring what actually matters, how many jobs are created, how many workers stay, and why families choose Colorado or don’t. If the policies are so great, they shouldn’t need spin doctors to explain why the workers keep disappearing.
Source: The Denver Post
