At TGRP Solutions, we’re always keeping an eye on the job market here in the Mile High City. Anyone paying attention hears how “hot” Denver is and hears often about the strong housing market—rising home prices and the dramatic increase of home sales between 2020 and 2021 (starting well before that)—but exactly how strong is the economy in Colorado and Denver if you are job seeking?
Here are a few signs of the times that this is a good place to be searching for a job (and a good place to be looking for talent if you are a business that’s hiring):
Companies are still coming here. A quick perusal of the Denver Business Journal shows you that many companies continue to locate in the Centennial state:
· Australian company Finder announced in June 2021 that Denver would be a second U.S. hub.
· Palantir Technologies moved to Denver from Palo Alto in mid-2020.
· FileInvite, which was founded in New Zealand, selected Colorado as its U.S. headquarters in June 2021.
· And just last month, business-to-business payment platform Melio picked Colorado as its western U.S. headquarters.
These are just a few examples, but you get the picture. Read a much longer list of companies opening offices in Denver assembled by the Metro Denver Economic Development Council.
Smart people live here. More than 41% of metro Denver residents hold bachelor’s degrees or better. The lifestyle, weather and comparative cost of living (against cities in California and New York, for example) mean many of the best and brightest are attracted to this beautiful state and its variety of industries: aerospace, bioscience, energy, investment services, IT, and others.
Prosperity abounds (on several scales). The Metro Denver Economic Development Council shared in its “Toward a More Competitive Colorado 2020” report a few notable rankings about Colorado:
· U.S. News & World Report ranked Colorado as the Top State Economy in 2020 for the 4th year in a row.
· The Brookings Institute in 2020 identified that metro Denver was the only U.S. community that grew across four major indices: growth, prosperity, inclusion and inclusion by race.
· The Milken Institute ranks Colorado 2nd nationally for top science and technology hubs (considering factors such as research and development inputs, risk capital and entrepreneurial infrastructure, human capital investment, technology and science workforce, and tech concentration and dynamism.
· U.S. News & World Report ranked four Colorado communities in the top five places to live: Boulder (No. 1), Denver (No. 1), Colorado Springs (No. 4) and Fort Collins (No. 5). No wonder people love coming here!
There is a high concentration of accounting jobs in Colorado. If you’ve heard that Colorado is a great state for those in the accounting field, you’re correct. The Bureau of Labor Statistics backs this up too. Colorado ranked as having the second-highest concentration of accountant/auditor jobs in the country. The annual mean wage? $85,120. And among the top 10 metro areas with the highest concentration of jobs and location quotients (the ratio of area concentration to the national average concentration), two of them are in Colorado: Denver/Aurora/Lakewood and Boulder.
Colorado remains a strong economy and here at TGRP Solutions, we’re seeing it too. If you’re job hunting or just like to keep tabs on the job market, contact us. We’ll share more about the employers we work with that are hiring, our outlook on the future and more.
