Colorado prides itself on its entrepreneurial spirit, yet, it took about 4 1/2 years to recover from the 2001 recession and it will take longer to rebound from the Great Recession. In short, the primary reason the state experienced net job growth was a decline in gross job losses and weak gross job gains.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics produces the Business Employment Dynamics data (BDM), a data set that provides gross job added because of expansion and openings and gross jobs lost because of contractions and closures. This differs from the wage and salary data series that reports only total net jobs.
The data shows that since 2000, Gross Job Gains and Gross Job Losses have been volatile and both have trended downward.
Since 1993, between 18.1% and 24.7% of the Gross Jobs Added are from openings while between 75.3% and 81.9% are from expansions. For that same period, the range of Gross Job Lost from contractions is 77.0% to 86.4% and the range for closings has been 13.6% to 23.0%. In the short-term, Gross Losses are moving downward and Gross Additions are headed upwards.
For more information go to the report, “Why Weaker Job Growth?” on cber.co. It can be found in the Special Reports Section.
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