The 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 lives on our one-stop hub NoCoRecovers.com and provides great 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 recovery continues but has lost a little momentum
- Unemployment ticked up slightly
- Job posting activity leveled off and remains low in Weld County
- Nonfarm employment 2% below 2019 average in Larimer and 7% below in Weld County
- Transportation, Warehousing, and Utilities and Professional & Business Services remain the bright spots among employment sectors. Leisure & Hospitality continues to improve but remains well below its 2019 monthly average. Retail has recovered in Weld County but not in Larimer County
- Average hourly earnings have declined in Weld County but have been steadily climbing in Larimer County likely due more to a change in the mix of occupations rather than a change in wages.
- The Restaurant Revitalization Fund brought $36.5 million to 176 grantees in the region. 58% of the recipients were restaurants. The average grant size was $202,000. Only about 10% were to franchises. 20% of the grantees were from “disadvantaged” groups (other than women/veterans), 3% were veteran owned, 40% were women owned
- Retail sales remain strong.
- People have returned to shopping/recreation but not to workplaces
- Home prices continue to be high, though the median sale price in Larimer County was lower this month than last month.
- Commercial vacancy rates continue to be high for office and industrial space but they seem to be stabilizing and becoming less bad.
We encourage you to keep an eye on the tracker as we all work to help our economy rebound and reignite.