Colorado Job Losses Are a Flare Gun, Not Flat Growth

The spin is almost as insulting as the numbers.

Colorado lost 11,700 jobs last year. The labor force shrank too. That is not some weird little statistical hiccup. That is a flare gun. And yet the people whose job it is to explain the economy to the rest of us still talk like this is just a moody patch of weather rolling through. Nothing to see here, folks. Just “flat growth territory.” Different clowns, same circus.

Here is the problem normal people can feel in their wallet before a state economist ever puts it in a chart. Colorado is getting harder to afford, harder to build in, harder to hire in, and harder to believe in if you are a working family, a small business owner, or anybody who remembers what this state used to be before the legislature turned it into a piñata full of taxpayer dollars and regulatory nonsense.

You do not lose jobs, lose workers, watch participation drop, and then get to act like the state is just unlucky. At some point the call is coming from inside the Capitol.

Jared Polis and the Democrat supermajority under the Gold Dome have spent years governing like Colorado is a social experiment with mountains. More mandates. More regulations. More performative lawsuits. More pet causes. More bureaucracy stacked on top of people already drowning in costs. They govern like every problem can be fixed with one more bill, one more board, one more press release, one more round of virtue signaling for the donor class.

Meanwhile, actual productive people are looking around and asking a very fair question. Why stay?

Why keep building here when the rules never stop changing? Why expand payroll when government treats employers like suspects and taxpayers like an ATM? Why raise a family in a state where common sense got replaced by political cosplay?

And spare me the polished line that this is just part of a national trend. That is the favorite trick of failed leadership. When things go bad, blame the nation. When things go good, take a bow like you invented prosperity. Facts over fan clubs.

Yes, the whole country has had its share of economic stupidity. But Colorado used to punch above its weight because we had a culture that rewarded work, risk, energy, and enterprise. We were not perfect, but we were functional. We understood that prosperity does not come from government micromanaging every square inch of life. It comes from getting out of the damn way.

Now we get slow growth at best, job losses at worst, and a political class that still thinks the answer is more of the same. That is the part that should worry people most. Not just the decline, but the arrogance. They are driving the car into the ditch and lecturing the passengers about tire pressure.

Colorado is not declining by accident. It is being managed into decline by people who mistake ideology for leadership.

Will the last person out turn off the lights? At this rate, probably. And Democrats will still hold a press conference to explain why darkness is actually a sign of progress. fileciteturn0file1

Source: The Colorado Sun