Today, and on the fourth Friday of each month, we will feature business insights from Kevin Welch, Founder and CEO of Journey Payroll & HR.

I have had the opportunity to spend time with Kevin discussing the current business climate, opportunities for growth, and how we address the barriers limiting the economic success of our region. The conversations — and the thoughtfulness behind his insights — have been powerful, and it is something we are excited to share with you, our membership.

We’ve given Kevin free range to write about what’s on his mind, so take the time to tune in and join the conversation. I find his observations, passion, and leadership incredibly valuable, and I invite you to follow along.

 

The Headlines Say Rebound. Your Employees Aren’t Buying It.

What Colorado Employers Need to Know About Culture and Retention When the Labor Market Shifts in 2026

✅ Key Takeaways

 

1. ✅ National payrolls rebounded by 178,000 in March 2026, but the headline number is misleading. Much of the gain was driven by the return of striking healthcare workers and seasonal construction recovery, not a broad economic surge. The underlying national hires rate remains stuck at 3.1%, the lowest since 2020.
2. ✅ Colorado added 6,600 jobs in January 2026, but the state’s annual job growth rate sits at -0.4% (a net loss of 11,000 jobs) compared to a national rate of 0.2%. Colorado’s unemployment rate sits at 3.9% as of the most recent CDLE data available, with March figures not expected until May. Local options are genuinely scarce, and Colorado employees know it.
3. ✅ A suppressed hires rate does not mean employees are comfortable. Most workers are staying put out of caution, not loyalty, and there is a significant difference between those two things.
4. ✅ Employers who confuse a quiet workforce with a stable one are walking into a retention crisis they won’t see coming until it is too late.
5. ✅ Both employers and employees are operating from a place of uncertainty right now. The leaders who acknowledge that tension and respond with clarity, consistency, and genuine investment in their people are the ones who will come out of this period ahead.
6. ✅ Kevin Welch and Journey Payroll & HR work with Colorado employers to build the HR infrastructure, compensation structures, and people strategies that turn nervous retention into genuine loyalty.

Everyone thought the national jobs rebound would give employers the upper hand. March’s headline number of 178,000 jobs added looked encouraging at first glance. I want to push back on that, because when you look at what actually drove those numbers, and what is happening specifically here in Colorado, the picture is considerably more complicated.

And from where I sit, talking to Colorado employers every single week, nobody on either side of the employment relationship actually feels like they have the upper hand right now. They just feel like they cannot afford to make a mistake.

That is a completely different dynamic, and if you are running a business in Colorado in 2026, it is one worth understanding clearly.

The March BLS report, released April 3rd, showed national nonfarm payrolls rising by 178,000. But strip away the return of 31,000 striking healthcare workers and the seasonal construction bounce after a brutal winter, and the underlying labor market remains deeply subdued. The national hires rate is still sitting at 3.1%, the lowest it has been since the early days of the pandemic recovery. The workforce is not moving.

Colorado’s picture is even more telling. The state added 6,600 jobs, but the state unemployment rate sits at 3.9% as of the most recent CDLE data available, with March figures not expected until May. More significantly, Colorado’s over-the-year job growth sits at -0.4% (a net loss of 11,000 jobs) compared to a national growth rate of just 0.2%. The Colorado Department of Labor and Employment tracks this data closely, and the trend is consistent: tech hiring across Colorado remains effectively frozen, professional services and construction have both seen meaningful pullbacks, and the CU Leeds School of Business forecast of roughly 0.6% annual job growth for 2026 looks, if anything, optimistic against what we are actually seeing.

Here is something worth understanding about that 178,000 number before you let it shape your thinking: it is a first draft.

The BLS revises its initial monthly payroll figures twice before they are considered final, and the recent track record on those revisions is worth paying attention to. Looking at the eleven completed revision cycles from April 2025 through February 2026, nine of the eleven months were revised downward once the final data came in. The average revision over that period was approximately negative 16%, with an average absolute change of roughly 34,000 jobs per month. Applied to March’s headline number, that historical pattern suggests the final figure could come in closer to 150,000 jobs, a meaningful difference from what the headlines are celebrating today.

The March 2026 number will not be finalized until June. That is not a criticism of the BLS. It is simply how the data works, and most business owners making decisions today do not know it.

Do not let the national headline fool you. The tension in Colorado workplaces is still very real.

The Employee Side of the Equation

Here is what I want Colorado employers to actually hear: your employees are not job searching right now because they are afraid to. The market feels uncertain. The Colorado numbers confirm that local options are genuinely limited, and workers who might have quietly started looking earlier this year are now sitting tight, watching, and waiting.

That sounds like good news for retention. It is not, and here is why.

An employee who stays because leaving feels risky is not the same as an employee who stays because they want to be there. The first one is counting the days until the market stabilizes. The second one is invested in what you are building together. When you manage those two types of employees the same way, you will not know the difference until the moment the market shifts and half your team quietly starts interviewing.

Frozen is not the same as loyal. Colorado employers who understand that distinction right now will be in a significantly stronger position twelve months from now.

The Employer Side of the Equation

I hear it from business owners constantly: “At least I’m not worried about losing people right now.” And I get it. After the hiring chaos of the last few years, a period of relative workforce stability feels like a relief. Even with March’s rebound in the national headlines, that stability is a holding pattern, not a healing.

The employers who use this window to genuinely invest in their people, to shore up culture, to address the compensation gaps they have been meaning to fix, to actually develop the frontline managers who carry more weight than anyone gives them credit for, those are the employers who are building something durable.

Here is a number worth sitting with: even with March’s headline gain, the national hires rate remains at 3.1%, the lowest since early 2020. The workforce is not moving. But workforce stillness and workforce loyalty are not the same thing, and building your retention strategy around the former is a bet I would not want to make.

The employers who simply exhale and move on are setting themselves up for a talent exodus the moment conditions improve.

Colorado is not a state where good people stay somewhere they do not feel valued, and Fort Collins is a highlighted version of that. The workforce here is educated, mobile, and paying attention. If your team is staying put right now, they are watching how you treat them during the uncertainty. That is an opportunity you only get once.

Where Leaders at Every Level Come In

I want to be direct about something. When I talk about leadership in this context, I am not just talking about the owner or the CEO. I am talking about every single person in your organization who manages other people, including the team leads, the project managers, the supervisors on the floor, and the longtime employees who carry informal authority whether you have given them a title or not.

This is a moment where those people matter enormously, because the employee who is quietly deciding whether to stay or go is not making that decision based on a company-wide all-hands or the CEO’s LinkedIn post. They are making it based on how their direct manager talked to them last Tuesday. How clearly their supervisor explained what is happening with the business. Whether anyone at work made them feel like a person and not just a headcount.

Leadership culture is not a value on a poster. It is what your managers do every single day, in the small moments that nobody is watching. And right now, those small moments are being weighed more carefully than usual by every person on your payroll.

The practical implication for Colorado employers is this: if you have managers who are not equipped to lead through uncertainty, this is the time to address it. Not when the market heats up again and people start leaving. Now, while you still have the runway to get it right.

What This Actually Looks Like in Practice

The businesses I have seen navigate this kind of market moment well tend to do a few things consistently:

• They communicate more, not less. When things feel uncertain, silence from leadership gets interpreted as bad news. Even a simple “here is what we know, here is what we are watching, and here is what is not changing” creates stability for people who are feeling anything but stable. They utilize partners and vendors that care for them as people first, which is why this is our philosophy at Journey Payroll & HR.
• They look at compensation honestly. A suppressed hires rate does not mean your people have forgotten what they are worth. If your pay structure has drifted below market, and many Colorado employers’ structures have after the last few years of rapid change, your best people know it. The Colorado Department of Labor and Employment’s labor market information resources are a useful starting point for understanding what competitive compensation looks like by role and region in Colorado.
• They invest in their managers. Training a frontline manager to have a good retention conversation is one of the highest return investments you can make right now. It is not expensive. It just requires intention.
• And they treat culture as infrastructure, not decoration. Culture is what your organization actually does, how people are treated, how decisions get made, and whether hard conversations happen with honesty and care. No culture is perfect, as we are all imperfect humans. Though, this quieter market window is the time to really focus on it.

The Bottom Line

Both employers and employees are walking carefully right now, and that shared caution creates something genuinely rare: a moment where good leadership can actually be felt.

Your employees are not going anywhere immediately. But they are paying attention. And the Colorado employers who use this window to build real loyalty, not just workforce stability born from fear, are the ones who will keep their best people when the market opens back up.

That is the job right now. Not just managing through uncertainty. Leading through it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does the March 2026 jobs report mean for Colorado employers?
The March BLS report showed 178,000 jobs added nationally, but Kevin Welch of Journey Payroll & HR cautions Colorado employers not to be misled by the headline. Much of that gain came from the return of striking healthcare workers and seasonal construction recovery, not broad economic momentum. Colorado’s own annual job growth rate sits at just 0.1%, unemployment ticked up to 4.8%, and the national hires rate remains at 3.1%, the lowest since 2020. The underlying tension in Colorado workplaces is still very real.

Why is employee retention still a priority when workers are not job searching?
According to Kevin Welch, employees who stay out of caution rather than genuine engagement are fundamentally different from employees who are truly invested in your organization. Colorado’s limited local job market means workers are holding still right now, not holding on. When conditions improve, employees who were held in place by limited options will begin to look elsewhere. Colorado employers who build authentic loyalty during this window will retain their best people through the next cycle.

What can Colorado employers do right now to strengthen retention?
Kevin Welch recommends three priorities for Colorado employers in the current market: communicate more frequently and with transparency, review compensation against current Colorado market benchmarks using resources like the CDLE Labor Market Information Gateway, and invest in developing frontline managers who directly influence whether people stay or go. Culture is not a poster. It is what happens in daily interactions between managers and their teams.

Why do frontline managers matter so much to retention right now?
Most employees decide whether to stay at a company based on their relationship with their direct manager, not company-wide messaging from senior leadership. Kevin Welch and the team at Journey Payroll & HR work with Colorado employers to build manager capability specifically because those relationships are where retention is won or lost, especially during periods of workforce uncertainty.

How is Colorado’s labor market different from the national picture in 2026?
Significantly. While national payrolls rebounded in March, Colorado’s annual job growth sits at just 0.1% compared to a national rate of 1.2%, and the state’s unemployment rate of 4.8% exceeds the national rate of 4.3%. The Colorado Department of Labor and Employment publishes regional labor market data at cdle.colorado.gov that Colorado employers can use to understand what is happening in their specific industry and geography, rather than relying on national figures that do not reflect Colorado’s reality.

How can Journey Payroll & HR help with retention and HR strategy?
Journey Payroll & HR, led by Kevin Welch, provides Colorado small and mid-sized employers with the HR infrastructure, compensation support, and people strategy resources that larger companies have always had access to. If you want to think through your retention approach or HR positioning heading into the rest of 2026, reach out at JourneyPayrollHR.com.

About Kevin Welch

Kevin Welch is the CEO, Owner, and Founder of Journey Payroll & HR, a locally owned payroll and HR services company headquartered in Colorado. Kevin has a straightforward mission: give Colorado’s small and mid-sized businesses access to the same quality payroll, HR, and compliance support that larger companies have always taken for granted.

Kevin has led Journey to being on BizWest’s Mercury 100 list of Colorado’s fastest-growing companies 14 times, recognized as a Company to Watch from ColoradoBiz, and awarded the Torch Award for Ethics by the BBB. Kevin writes on payroll compliance, HR strategy, workforce trends, and the employment law changes that keep Colorado business owners up at night. He has a reputation for translating complicated regulatory and workforce topics into plain language that actually helps people make better decisions for their businesses and their teams.

To connect with Kevin or learn more about Journey Payroll & HR, visit JourneyPayrollHR.com or connect with him on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/kevinwelchjourney.

Chamber Colorado Monthly Articles | Kevin Welch, Journey Payroll & HR | JourneyPayrollHR.com