WASHINGTON: Colorado’s unemployment rate fell again in April even as it remained the lowest in the nation for a second straight month, hitting 2.3 percent, according to a report Friday from the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. Until last month, Colorado’s lowest unemployment rate in 41 years of record-keeping was 2.7 percent, a tight level reached in 2001 during the super-heated economy of the dot-com boom. But in March, the state’s unemployment rate came in at 2.6 percent, even though hiring was weak.
But in April, hiring picked up again. Employers in Colorado added a net 1,800 nonfarm payroll jobs from March, for a total of 2,635,900 jobs, according to the survey of business establishments. Private sector payroll jobs increased 3,600 and government decreased by 1,800. The largest monthly gains, adjusting for seasonality, came in leisure and hospitality; trade, transportation, and utilities, and other services. Education and health services and construction reported the largest declines month-over-month. Mining, which includes oil and gas production, also shed jobs. The number of people describing themselves as unemployed, which labor statisticians define as not having a job but actively seeking one in the past month, fell from 75,700 in March to 68,300 in April. A year earlier, 96,400 people described themselves as unemployed.
