Fast hyperlinks: Colorado vs. U.S. unemployment price | third place for cable staff | John Malone speaks | Denver rents flat
For individuals who carefully watch Colorado’s labor market, a slight enhance within the state’s unemployment price to three.2% in September appears insignificant.
“As a reminder,” Ryan Gedney, senior labor economist on the state Division of Labor and Employment, mentioned throughout a information convention Friday, “Colorado’s unemployment price ranged between 2.5 and three.2% within the two years previous the pandemic, so proper now this era is fairly just like what we skilled pre pandemic by way of the unemployment price.”
Colorado’s labor market is seeing tendencies just like different states and the U.S. and continues to have a decrease unemployment price than the nation’s, which remained flat at 3.8% in September. However like Colorado, the U.S. price is close to its historic lows. “These adjustments within the unemployment price should not important, they’re actually small,” he mentioned.
In actual fact, he added, the three.2% price in Colorado, up from 3.1% in August and a pair of.8% in June, is just like what occurred final summer season when the state’s unemployment price ticked up over 3%. Nevertheless, when revisions had been made later after evaluating job information to bigger surveys within the spring, all of the charges had been revised again beneath 3%. He suspects that would occur once more.
He’ll be involved “if after benchmarking, we nonetheless see will increase like a half-a-percentage level or one thing like that,” he mentioned.
The labor information remains to be a disconnect for some enterprise leaders. A latest survey by the enterprise faculty at College of Colorado discovered that a lot of the executives surveyed had been bearish and anxious with larger rates of interest. Simply Wednesday, the 30-year fastened mortgage price reached 8% for the primary time because the mid-2000s.
“With mortgage and different long-term rates of interest going up particularly over the previous a number of weeks, that’s placing extra downward strain on the economic system, so, whereas it’s fairly exceptional how resilient the labor market has been, I wouldn’t be stunned to see some extra weak point within the subsequent spherical of knowledge releases,” mentioned Invoice Craighead, government director of UCCS Financial Discussion board in Colorado Springs, who known as the September job information “a little bit on the weak aspect.”
New claims for unemployment advantages in Colorado had been up within the first week of October, and the general September jobs report counted 3,600 extra individuals as unemployed, a quantity that reached above 100,000 for the primary time in 18 months. That September quantity, at 103,500, counts Coloradans 16 years and older who say they’re unemployed. Comparably, 3,149,100 Coloradans are employed, which is down 6,100 in a month.
Craighead added that the week-to-week adjustments in unemployment information could be noisy, so it’s greatest to concentrate to an extended interval. “I wouldn’t learn an excessive amount of into one week’s information.”
What else occurred in September?
- The federal government sector added 2,100 jobs final month. Gedney credit this to colleges returning for the brand new yr and employees again at work. Authorities, a bunch hit laborious within the pandemic, has added 19,000 jobs in Colorado up to now yr.
- The {industry} with the most important lack of jobs for the month was “different providers,” which was down by 2,600 jobs. Any such job contains restore, upkeep, laundry providers and extra. However Gedney thinks the quantity can be revised decrease.
- Pueblo, once more, led the state with the very best unemployment price for a metro area, at 4.3%. At 2.9%, Fort Collins was the one space beneath 3%. The Denver and Grand Junction areas had charges of three.3%, whereas Colorado Springs and Greeley had been at 3.4%.
Colorado ranks third for largest U.S. cable workforce
This week, hundreds of cable-industry professionals converged in Denver for the annual SCTE Cable-Tec Expo, an occasion of the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers.
Regardless of its nationwide profile, the convention was heavy on Colorado — from SCTE’s mum or dad, CableLabs in Louisville, to the cable suppliers who make use of hundreds of staff within the state, together with Comcast, with 7,000 within the state, and Constitution Communications, with 5,000, in accordance with firm officers.
A report on the financial impression of cable suppliers was additionally launched by one other {industry} affiliation, the NCTA-the Web & Tv Affiliation, with analysis executed by Oxford Economics, the industrial enterprise of Oxford College in the UK. In it, the report attributed $96 billion in gross home product to the U.S. cable {industry}, which straight employs 263,000 individuals.
The report additionally pulled out information by state, and Colorado ranked third for many cable staff and seventh for its GDP contribution. Curiously, Colorado cable suppliers employed 59,605 individuals, as of final yr, which is larger than the variety of cable staff in California, New York and Pennsylvania, dwelling to Comcast.
“Cable has at all times had an outsized presence in Colorado, as lots of the main corporations over time [TCI, ATC (predecessor to TWC)] have been headquartered within the state,” an NCTA spokesperson mentioned in an electronic mail. “The present presence is primarily comprised of engineering and know-how teams positioned within the Denver space. For instance, just about all of Constitution’s engineering/tech group is positioned in Colorado and Comcast has a big engineering/tech presence as properly. CO can also be a major video distribution hub.”
TCI is Tele-Communications Inc., which grew to become one of many nation’s largest cable suppliers within the Nineteen Eighties underneath John Malone, who moved to Denver to take the job as TCI’s president. He by no means left. Malone expanded his cable empire by merging, buying or investing in corporations like Constitution, Warner Bros. Discovery and worldwide cable supplier Liberty International, the place he’s chairman to Liberty’s CEO Mike Fries.
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Extra with Malone and Fries
At this week’s SCTE occasion, Fries and Malone mentioned the previous, current and way forward for the cable {industry}. Malone, the second wealthiest individual in Colorado in accordance with Forbes, is thought for his monetary acumen. He attended the present just about Tuesday and in the course of the opening session, Fries ended with a lightning spherical of questions that appeared value sharing:
Fries: Sure or no — Disney will nonetheless personal ESPN in 5 years?
Malone: No
Fries: You’re a long-term purchaser of one in all these: Disney or Netflix?
Malone: Netflix
Fries: You’re a long-term purchaser of one in all these: Apple or Google?
Malone: That’s laborious. Google.
Fries: Sure or No — The federal government wins the antitrust case towards Google?
Malone: There’s a settlement.
Fries: Microsoft or Activision, good or dangerous?
Malone: Good for Microsoft
Fries: The IPO market comes again in ’24 or ’25?
Malone: ’25
Fries: “Yellowstone” or “Ted Lasso”
Malone: “Ted Lasso”
Fries: Probably the most thrilling decade for cable, is it in its previous or the longer term? That’s a layup, John.
Malone: The long run.
➔ ICYMI: Cable {industry} pushes subsequent era of cable tech, with Colorado main the way in which
Different working bits
➔Denver house rents are flat. However they’re up barely, in accordance with the Condominium Affiliation of Metro Denver’s third-quarter report, which counted 411,079 residences within the Denver metro space on the finish of September. Common rents of $1,888 are up a half of a % for the quarter and up 1% from a yr in the past. The median lease in Denver is $1,810. The change within the variety of vacant residences was additionally flat and that’s pointing to a cooling off for lease will increase. About 120,000 extra house items are underneath building or within the pipeline and that would assist ease rental charges, report researcher Cary Bruteig, with Condominium Insights, mentioned in a information launch. “If emptiness charges proceed to extend, and given the massive building pipeline they in all probability will, then rents are prone to both stay flat or lower.”
➔ It’s official: Colorado will get Tech Hub designation for quantum know-how. The group behind the proposal to make the state an official U.S. hub for quantum know-how — and appeal to funding, staff and firms — is completely satisfied to get that out of the way in which. Now the laborious half: Constructing out the quantum ecosystem. >> STORY
➔ What’s do you want to know Proposition HH? Learn this explainer by Solar reporter Jesse Paul in addition to a reality test. >> MORE
Thanks for sticking with me for this week’s report. Keep in mind to take a look at The Solar’s each day protection on-line. As at all times, share your 2 cents on how the economic system is preserving you down or serving to you up at cosun.co/heyww. ~ tamara
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