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10 29 24 CU Leeds School Economist Richard Wobbekind on current market indicators
But there's only one feeling like knowing your banker personally, like growing up with a bank you can count on, like being sure what you've earned is safe, secure, and local. There's only one feeling like knowing you're supporting your community. You deserve more from a bank. You deserve an institution that stood strong for generations. Bank of Colorado, there's only one member FDIC. It is the Tuesday edition of Colorado's Morning News. Marty Lenz, Gina Gondek, good morning. Three million jobs the first time in Colorado, the total number of jobs has hit that mark. Yeah, and it's just one of the interesting pieces that we're learning from the latest CU Economic Indicators Report from the CU Leeds Business Research Division. Joining us now on the KOA Common Spirit Health Hotline to talk more about it is CU Senior Economist, Dr. Richard Waviken, Dr. Waviken, thank you so much for your time. As always, our business and money editor, Pat, what are joining us on this call as well. Looking at the overall report, what were some of the biggest things that stood out to you? Is our state heading in a positive direction or are there still some economic concerns? In general, we're very much heading in a positive direction. We've slipped back a little bit in terms of our overall growth rankings. For years and years, we were top 10 and then we've been sort of top 15 or 20. Now some of the indicators appear to be slowing and putting us sort of back in the middle of the pack, so we're watching that closely. But overall, it's still a tight labor market, although less tight than it used to be, more approaching the sort of the national norms, solid unemployment rates. And as you highlighted, a record number of jobs, record number of people participating in the labor force and we still have the fourth highest labor force participation rate. So overall, the picture is good in terms of the key economic indicators. Now you mentioned that we are seeing the labor pool continuing to struggle to find the workers that the employers need to fill the jobs. A lot of people are retiring. Is that one factor or are there others as well? This is one of the factors and it's probably, I would argue the single largest because it's estimated that 40,000 people are going out of the workforce into retirement in the state of Colorado annually. So we need 40,000 people to go into the labor force just to save even in job growth. And if we're trying to have, you know, job growth of 1.6, 1.7 percent or some number like that, we need another 40 plus thousand people to be going into the workforce. So that's one of the pieces. Slowing immigration, net migration to the state is another factor that's occurred. It started sort of with COVID and we're still attracting labor force in sort of the 25 to sort of 45 kind of range. That's still positive for the state. We're still viewed as a place to be. But we are losing some of the older folks in the who are opted for potentially less expensive places to live. The North and South Carolina, Florida, Texas, types of locations. So those have been big gainers over the last several years. And while we still have a net positive flow, it's smaller than it was, say, five years ago. What job sectors are those jobs we need to replace? And then it sounds like you're saying that migration and immigration could solve or at least fill that gap that we have with those jobs. Assuming that, you know, the migration, you know, is well-educated for the high-tech jobs or is appropriately trained and, of course, workforce and all these other groups in the state and nationally are trying to make sure that there's that match going on. But it's actually, you know, very broad-based. We see, you know, job shortages and probably the largest are in areas like healthcare in terms of where there are the most jobs opened for available, per-available, trained worker. But we also see it in a wide variety of skill sets. And increasingly, we're going to see it in areas like construction. When the construction sector bounces back, we're going to have lost a lot of people to graying in that sector. So it's really very broad-based. Dr. Wapiken, you talk about job losses, but we also saw that positive job growth in this report. So what were some of those industries that saw the largest job increases? Well, we continue to see and we have seen in the last year, both in Colorado and nationally, the growth is in leisure and hospitality. Healthcare, as I mentioned, is a large gainer in terms of jobs and then the government sector. And all of those were sectors that had, you know, a lot of difficulty filling jobs when the economy was surging and the labor force was super tight. And now that the labor force has, you know, a little bit more slack in it than it did a year ago, some of those jobs that have been open for a long time are getting backfilled. So we see that, and again, we see the sort of the same trend in those sectors nationally, where we're starting to see schools that were understaffed actually, you know, being able to hire, for example, teachers and assistants and so on. What about inflation? Where are we in Colorado, at least compared with the rest of the country? We're doing great, you know, in that dimension, and I'm sure I've said this on a previous call somewhere, but, you know, 11 of the last 14 years Colorado has had a higher inflation rate than the country, as measured by the Aurora Lakewood measure of CPI. And so this year we're below, we're at 1.4 percent, and the nation is at 2.4 percent. So this is encouraging to us. We are a little bit more expensive place to live, as we know, living here, especially in terms of housing. So when we look at this where, you know, we feel that workers should be feeling a little bit better about having, you know, more spending power, if you will, based on prices going up a lot slower than they are nationally. Final question, any election concerns with how it's going to impact the economic indicators and people's outlook moving forward for Colorado? You know, the uncertainty in our last confidence index, which came out earlier this month, we saw a lot of people, business people indicating they were holding back, pending the results of the election. Not so much saying one party or the other, but just the uncertainty of knowing what the operating environment was going to be. So I don't feel that as much. I do have a little bit of concern. It's been voiced a lot in national media that both of the candidates at the national level could have policies put in place that might be inflationary in nature. So that could slow down, for example, interest rate cuts that we're hoping for over the next, say, year and a half. We'll continue following all of that. It's CU, senior economist Dr. Richard Wabekin. Thank you so much for your time and insight. We appreciate it. There's only one feeling like knowing your banker personally, like growing up with a bank you can count on, like being sure what you've earned is safe, secure, and local. There's only one feeling like knowing you're supporting your community. You deserve more from a bank. You deserve an institution that stood strong for generations. Bank of Colorado, there's only one. Remember FDIC.