Job-wise, Colorado has certainly seen better days than in the last three years.
Recently, I posted a story about Colorado’s puny recovery from the depths of this recession. Peak asked me to review my data sources since some readers doubted my results.
Good thing they questioned the finding that Colorado’s recovery had been the least successful in America. I used Bureau of Labor Statistics information that the Bureau produced in 2009 and called “final”; since then, it turns out, BLS did a massive revision of several years’ of employment data.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics revision for August 2009 unemployment data determined that back then the “actual” unemployment level in several states, including Colorado, was statistically much worse than they had reported as “final” numbers back in 2009.
Colorado’s unemployment level, given this revision, has seen a reduction in unemployment of 0.2% since August ’09. (The original data I reported had showed we actually got 0.9% worse instead of this very small change for the better.)
So Colorado isn’t “dead last.” It is, instead, ninth worst in recovering.
With due respect, I don’t see Obama – on his next trip to Colorado – crowing that in the last three years our state, under Obama’s leadership, has seen unemployment cut by two-tenths of one percent. But who knows? Maybe that’s the best he can do for us.
SPECIAL NOTE OF THANKS: The Kansas City regional BLS office was very helpful in assuring that, this time, I got the right data from them. LN, from that office, went above and beyond, emailing me a 13 page report of the “proper” August 2009 numbers.