It’s time again for our monthly update to the Economic Tracker. Your Fort Collins Area Chamber, working with other economic development and business support organizations across the region, created a tool to track the economic recovery in Northern Colorado.

This valuable resource is a set of indicators that represent critical aspects of the Larimer and Weld County economies, is based on data that is accessible in a useable format and is updated frequently with little lag time. The Economic Tracker provides excellent insight into the impact of the pandemic and recession on Northern Colorado.

The most recent update to the Tracker includes the following insights from our Economic Analyst, Caroline Alexander:

The region continues to add jobs at a steady pace. In the past 12 months, Northern Colorado has added 2,300 jobs.

• The labor force has added almost 2,000 workers in the past 12 months. There are now as many unemployed people as there are job openings.
• Even as the region has continued to add jobs and the labor force has grown, the unemployment rate has been rising. A look at the components of the labor force shows that the number of employed residents has declined in the last 12 months. This implies that regional employers are filling positions with workers who live outside of the Northern Colorado region.