Tamara Chuang

Business/Technology Reporter

Quick links: What happens to complaints | July unemployment rate | Take the poll | Denver inflation | Horizon Organic adds B Corp | 100 Comcast RISE winners

Before Rohit Chopra stepped foot into the city of Westminster, the director of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said he did some research about local businesses.

He noticed that in the city, much like other cities across America, there were a lot of banks, grocery stores, pharmacies and other businesses linked to large corporate chains.

“Even here in Westminster,” Chopra said Thursday during an event hosted by the city, “it’s more and more banks that aren’t locally owned. And so the net result is that sometimes you go into a branch and there’s really no one who can actually help talk you through anything. You’re siphoned over to a 1-800 number or the person tells you to go online. And what happens is that everything is becoming a little bit more less-human.”

Chopra is trying to humanize our daily lives again by reducing the corporate callousness that can emerge with modern technology, like chatbots. As companies have grown larger through mergers and acquisitions, the effort to cut costs and increase profits has taken a toll on consumers and customer service. He’s especially interested in how banks and financial companies are treating people. As an independent agency inside the Federal Reserve, CFPB was a response to financial fraud that led to the Great Recession. Essentially, it enforces federal consumer protection law and keeps an eye out for financial mayhem that could hurt consumers.

During his stop in Colorado, Chopra talked a lot about junk fees and trying to rid the world of systems that might trick consumers into agreeing to them. He was joined by U.S. Reps. Brittany Pettersen and Yadira Caraveo and Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, who are in the same pursuit.

Chopra’s experience of contesting an issue with an airline ticket led him down an “endless loop” first with a chatbot and then through the airline’s phone system that transferred him from person to person.

“I think they want you to hang up,” he said to the audience. “They don’t want you to contest the fee or contest the problem. And I just think this is fundamentally wrong. There’s nothing more dehumanizing than being charged fees for fake or worthless services.”

The agency does get pushback. An effort to ban credit card late fees over $8 is now on hold after the U.S. banking industry opposed it. Prohibiting firms from charging new “convenience fees” to consumers paying off loans online or by phone, doesn’t mean companies abide by the law, causing CFPB to file an Amicus brief in support in such legal cases. Companies also don’t like that consumer complaints are published online and unvetted.

Got a problem? CFPB wants to know

But when consumers feel helpless, sometimes they don’t speak up. And now, there’s a federal agency that, he said, listens. On the online complaint page, CFPB says it sends companies about 25,000 complaints about financial products each week.

“When we get complaints at ConsumerFinance.gov, it doesn’t go into a black hole. We order the bank to reply to you and then we look into it,” Chopra said. “We also prioritize issues that we think could become a problem later. For example, we mentioned voice cloning, generative AI-related scams. … We’ll get six or seven complaints that sound exactly the same. And it turns out that 60,000 or 70,000 people have that problem.”

His other consumer tip? “If you’re in a dispute with a bank or a company, one of the things that often will get their attention is if you say to them or write to them, if you don’t solve this, I’m filing a complaint with the state AG or the CFPB,” he added. “Trust me, they will respond.”

In Colorado, Weiser said consumers can report scams, shady practices and other complaints at StopFraudColorado.gov. His team of lawyers and investigators don’t turn every complaint into a full-on court case but they look for trends. And sometimes, they’ll just send a letter to the accused company.

“We tend to look at either particularly egregious situations or patterns and sometimes we’re able to ask a few questions,” Weiser said. “And that actually does the trick.”

Resources:

➔ File a complaint about a financial product. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau takes complaints online or by phone on any consumer-financial problem, including credit cards, debt collection, mortgages, loans and credit reports. The federal agency says that each week, it sends 25,000 complaints to companies for a response and most companies respond within 15 days. >> consumerfinance.gov/complaint or 855-411-2372

➔ File a complaint with Colorado AG. The state’s highest-ranked law enforcement officer is the AG and he works with local and federal agencies to investigate violations of consumer protection laws, antitrust and other legal issues. >> coag.gov/file-complaint (also in Spanish)

➔ More places to get problems resolved. Another official resource is via USA.Gov, which is part of the U.S. General Services Administration. This page has links to where consumers can complain about online purchases, company products or services, text scams and robocalls, car-related issues and more. >> usa.gov/consumer-complaints

July unemployment rate up a bit to 3.9%

In July, Colorado’s unemployment rate reached its highest level since January 2022. At 3.9%, it was up one-tenth of a percentage point from June. But even though this means more Coloradans were unemployed last month (up 1,844 to 126,270 who were looking for a job), the state’s labor force grew, too.

According to preliminary data, the state’s labor force is the largest it’s ever been, with 3,242,918 employed or looking for work. The changes in July, though, are pretty slight and are in line or better than how the nation is doing, said Tim Wonhof, an economist at the state Department of Labor and Employment

“Our population in Colorado has been growing consistently over time and our labor force has been growing consistently,” Wonhof said. “We, on the whole, are still at very low unemployment rates. Do we have a high number of discouraged workers? We have 126,000 people who are out of work and about a fifth of those, I believe, would fall into that category. But do we have more than usual now? I wouldn’t say we do.”

Wonhof pointed to a state labor department chart (below) that shows Coloradans between the working ages of 25 to 54 years old are part of the workforce more so than they’ve ever been in the past two decades.

The state also continues to add more jobs each month, adding 4,800 in July, he said. Nearly half were government jobs. For private industries, manufacturing lost 1,000 jobs, while trade, transportation and utility industries gained 4,100.

“Normally, our four-month average in Colorado would be a gain of 3,300 jobs. Well, we gained 4,800 (in July) so we’re ahead. At the national level, the four-month average is 154,000 and this month, they’re 114,000, so they’re a little bit down. But last month, it was the other way around,” Wonhof said. “I don’t read too much into the monthly numbers.”

Compared with the rest of the nation, Colorado was in the bottom half for unemployment rates, and ranked 31st. The U.S. unemployment rate for July was 4.3%.

>> See the data: Colorado’s July jobs report

Take the poll: How’s the economy treating you?

Denver led the way to lower inflation in July. Did you notice? Take the reader poll to help us report on Colorado’s economy: cosun.co/WWCOeconomy2024

Updates on big Colorado economy news

We reported on these stories earlier this week but there have been some updates. Keep reading.

➔ Denver-area inflation rate down to 1.9% in July. Prices are still rising, but inflation fell to its lowest 12-month increase in three years in Denver. That drop to a 1.9% inflation rate surprised a few local economists, especially since the U.S. rate is still at 2.9%, which was also the lowest in three years. So what’s causing the decline in Denver’s Consumer Price Index?

Prices here have fallen for some items, like gas, apparel and new and used cars. Grocery prices didn’t change at all. But other items continued to increase, including dining out, up 5.7%. Shelter was up 2.1%, and that’s a huge chunk of a consumer’s budget. Keep in mind, the official rate considers just the one-year change, not how much groceries cost today compared to five years ago. But yes, prices are much higher than five years ago.

Denver’s rate was also the lowest nationwide. But the Denver data appeared to be missing some key data points, like the change to costs of electricity and natural gas. I reached out to the Bureau of Labor Statistics to ask why and, essentially, they said they didn’t get enough responses. When there’s not enough, they don’t release the data, as in the case of the Denver energy index.

“The missing items will still impact the aggregate indexes they belong to,” said Justin Copple, a BLS spokesman. “The prices that were successfully collected are used to calculate an unpublishable CPI which is used to aggregate up to the larger expenditure categories all the way through to all items less food and energy and all items.”

Other items, like automobile insurance, have been removed entirely from Denver’s data. Auto insurance in Denver hasn’t been tracked since 2021. BLS officials said that, too, could be linked to low responses. In those cases, Denver’s auto insurance calculation would default to the national urban CPI, which was 18.6% higher in July.

>> Earlier: Denver inflation slowed faster than the national rate to 1.9%. Does it feel like it?

➔ New business filings dropped 21.7%. During her quarterly update on how many businesses there are in Colorado, Secretary of State Jena Griswold said the rate of new filings dropped 21.7% in the second quarter, compared with a year earlier. Griswold attributed the decline to the end of a big discount around June 2023 that dropped filing fees to $1.

But there were other concerns about the data, including the growing number of delinquent filers. As reported earlier, delinquencies grew 91,000 in the quarter and now number more than 934,000. The Secretary of State’s Office said that the list includes years of businesses that never officially dissolved and it also includes owners who may be just a few weeks late in renewing their paperwork. I wondered how late? Here’s additional information, which I’ll track in future new business updates.

Of those 934,437 delinquent filings in the second quarter, here’s how late they were as of Aug. 14, according to the Secretary of State’s Office.

• Less than 30 days: 14,034
• 30 to 59 days: 10,717
• 60 to 89 days: 14,591
• 90 days or more: 903,971

>> Earlier: Number of new Colorado businesses drops 21.7% nearly a year after filing-fee discount ends

Sun economy stories you may have missed

➔ Colorado food banks may soon run out of the federal funds they use to buy local produce. Colorado received close to $10 million in pandemic-era funding to help food banks buy local produce, but the money is running low with no replacement in sight >> Read story

➔ Colorado governor calls special session on property taxes to avoid ballot measure fight in November. The special session will allow lawmakers to advance a deal under which the conservative supporters of Initiatives 50 and 108 will pull their measures from the ballot >> Read story

➔ With rising rents, theater companies are renting a Denver office space to rehearse. The new Three Leaches Theatre on Colfax will house two theater companies and a gallery, and hopes to lessen the burden on the few affordable rehearsal spaces left in Denver >> Read story

➔ The economics of eating out have some of Denver’s top chefs dismayed, discouraged and looking elsewhere. Some of the city’s award-winning chefs get specific about their love/hate relationship of being part of Colorado’s largest dining scene >> Read story

➔ Geothermal developers to get $1M from Icelandic investors, energy office to tap resource deep under Chaffee County. Investors will match a $500,000 grant from the Colorado Energy Office, which Mt. Princeton Geothermal will put toward testing its well site near Buena Vista >> Read story

Other working bits

➔ Horizon Organic becomes a B Corp (again). The Broomfield dairy brand has provided organic milk since 1991. But only last month did it receive B Corp Certification, a designation that the for-profit company has met stringent tests and is deemed beneficial to all stakeholders, which includes employees, suppliers and the community. That’s the same with sister company Wallaby, which makes Greek yogurt. So, why only now? It had to reapply after its former parent, Danone sold the brands to Platinum Equity in April. Danone is one of the world’s largest B Corps.

“Following the acquisition,” said Tyler Holm, CEO of the two brands, in an email, “it was important to pursue independent B Corp certification to demonstrate an ongoing commitment to redefining success in business as a force for good. As a result, all Horizon Organic and Wallaby products will continue to carry the B Corp seal.”

Certified by the B Lab organization, companies must pass tests that score what their value and benefits are as a business, to the environment and the community. >> Horizon’s B Corp score

➔ Cost of health insurance is top challenge for small businesses. This shouldn’t be a surprise for members of the National Federation of Independent Business, which advocates for small business owners. Health insurance has been the top issue since 1986, according to the organization, which published its 2024 report called “Small Business Programs & Priorities.” Top Colorado-specific issues weren’t available, said state director Tony Gagliardi but “the threat of a massive federal tax hike in 2025 exacerbates the uncertainty Main Street Coloradans are feeling,” he said in a news release. He’s pushing for Congress to make the 20% Small Business Deduction permanent. >> Read report

➔ Comcast awards 100 southern Colorado companies a 30-second commercial and $5,000. The state’s dominant cable TV provider unveiled winners of its RISE awards, which isn’t an acronym but a program that launched in 2020 to support minority-owned small businesses impacted by the pandemic. The 100 winners in Colorado are all in the southern half of the state and include RAD Hostel in Colorado Springs, The Walter Brewing Company in Pueblo and Armadillo Ranch in Manitou Springs.

Comcast focused on southern Colorado because of the growth in small businesses which “account for over 90% of total employment,” said Wendy Artman, a Comcast spokesperson. “This is an area where this program can make a big difference.”

Recipients receive $5,000, a tech makeover and a fully produced TV commercial (from Comcast’s advertising sales division Effectv) that will air on local cable channels. >> The winners

Got some economic news or business bits Coloradans should know? Tell us: cosun.co/heyww

Thanks for sticking with me for this week’s report. Remember to check out The Sun’s daily coverage online. As always, share your 2 cents on how the economy is keeping you down or helping you up at cosun.co/heyww. ~ tamara

Miss a column? Catch up:

• Market recovers but here’s why Colorado job growth is slowing
• As food-insecurity funds end, Colorado farmers focus on food hub
• Colorado top-paying and lowest-paying jobs
• Repurposing old stuff in Colorado can be profitable
• Despite setbacks, a Durango builder is framing affordable houses in under a month
• What consumers and businesses need to know about Colorado’s “Do not sell my data” law
• Colorado employers may finally have found enough workers
• How a Denver company is fighting the problem of underemployment

What’s Working is a Colorado Sun column about surviving in today’s economy. Email tamara@coloradosun.com with stories, tips or questions. Read the archive, ask a question at cosun.co/heyww and don’t miss the next one by signing up at coloradosun.com/getww.

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If food, gas and used car prices in the Denver area seem like they’ve finally stabilized or dropped, the latest economic data backs that up. The Denver-area inflation rate rose to 1.9% in July from a year ago, continuing its decline since September, according to data released Wednesday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

That’s a whole percentage point lower than the national annual inflation rate of 2.9%. And compared with other cities, the prices of certain items are much friendlier to local wallets. 

“I paid just under $3/gallon at Costco here,” Steve Cohn, a Denver resident said in an email. “Last week in Chicago it was nearly a dollar more.”

In the past year, overall gasoline prices dropped double digits. Used-car prices are down 9.7%. The cost of food at grocery stores did not change. 

The 1.9% drop seemed surprising to area economists, who had expected national price growth to slow, in anticipation of the Federal Reserve lowering interest rates which will make loans for cars and houses more attractive to consumers. Denver had already fallen below the national rate earlier this year.

Denver’s dip in July is largely due to falling home-price growth, which dropped at a faster rate than the U.S, said Rich Wobbekind, an economist at University of Colorado. And housing costs take up a larger portion of a consumer’s monthly expenses so even a small decline can have a big impact.

“Yesterday, the NAR (National Association of Realtors) housing report came out and in the 10 cities I believe we were the only one negative year over year minus 0.7%,” Wobbekind said.

The slowing inflation, however, won’t reverse the rapid increase the area’s Consumer Price Index has experienced since 2021. Since local consumers felt the impact of higher prices before the rest of the U.S. — Denver had a 9.1% inflation rate in March 2022, with the U.S. following a few months later — overall prices have increased 10%. And prices for other items aren’t going down. They’re just going up more slowly and that’s impacting how people spend on the extras.  

“Our house payment has gone up $200 a month due to increases in our insurance and taxes,” said Linda Fahrenbruch, a Broomfield resident, who happened to be camping Tuesday in Pagosa Springs. “We have pretty much given up eating out and other entertainment with very few exceptions.”

Calling from her campsite where the Wi-Fi was very good, the retired Fahrenbruch said she and her husband are on their second local camping trip of the year. Usually, they travel for longer or farther. They cut back this year.

“It seemed like back in 2022, we still felt pretty comfortable and we weren’t as concerned with the high cost of everything as we are now,” she said. “I think it was 2022 when we went through Wyoming and into Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon and all the way down the coast to California. We just don’t feel like we can do anything like that now. … We’re hoping that prices are going to start coming down.”

New and used car prices are down 1.6%, though most of the decline is in the used-car market, which fell 9.7%. That doesn’t necessarily mean car prices are cheaper. But there has been a slowdown, said Matthew Groves, CEO of the Colorado Automobile Dealers Association.

“Our industry is largely recovering from the supply chain issues that ravaged us coming out of the pandemic. At times, spare parts can still be an issue, but largely the manufacture of new cars is stabilizing,” he said in an email. 

Incentives, especially for electric vehicles, may be keeping costs down, he added. “I’m sure you’ve seen some other stories that qualified buyers are taking leases on new EVs for less than $100 a month. Those heavy incentives push people towards new — in large part because it’s a hedge against the expensive repair bills of used.  Some of those purchase incentives do not extend to used vehicles.”

The cost of eating out continued to increase, up 5.7% locally. The restaurant industry was one of the hardest hit during the pandemic and the recovery as restaurant owners raised menu prices and some added service charges to offset the higher costs of food, labor, rent, utilities, taxes and more. Since July 2020, the cost of dining out is up 30%. But the cost of eating has slowed this year, though that’s been too late for some restaurants and owners as the number of customers dwindled.  

But there could be a number of reasons why Denver is leading the way on slower inflation, said Gary Horvath, an economist in Broomfield.

Denver’s data does have some holes, he pointed out. The July report for the Denver region doesn’t include electricity and natural gas costs and he’s not sure why. Since the end of 2021, the every-other-month report also has excluded changes to the cost of automobile insurance, which increased 18.6% nationwide in July. 

BLS officials did not have an immediate explanation for the exclusions but said they would look into it.

“I’m assuming it’s part of the overall calculation. Maybe it didn’t get done for some reason? But if you look into the May data, those areas were very high and when I say very high, it was 4% to 6% higher and that to me is very high,” Horvath said. “My sense is that electricity is still a high number.”

The economists at the Common Sense Institute, a conservative economic think tank in Greenwood Village, pointed out that Denver’s rate did increase faster than the U.S., at 0.6% compared with 0.2% in the past two months. They attributed the faster rise to “medical care (1.3%), transportation (1%), food (0.7%), and housing (0.4%).”

Brian Lewandowski, executive director at the University of Colorado business school’s Business Research Division, said that while Denver’s faster decline in inflation was a surprise, how it will fare in the future will be what he’s watching.

“While this is an improvement both nationally and locally, I look forward to watching this over the next few months to see if these rates can be sustained and with low volatility,” he said.

A 21.7% dip in folks filing to start a business in Colorado during the second quarter was largely attributed to the end of a program more than a year ago that reduced filing fees to $1, according to the latest quarterly data from the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office.

“It was the sharpest decrease year-over-year in the state (that) we’ve been tracking since 2005. That’s both in percentage terms and absolute numbers,” said Brian Lewandowski, executive director of University of Colorado’s Business Research Division, which analyzed the data for the Secretary of State’s Office. 

New business filings reached a second-quarter high last year at 54,940. The fee returned to $50 in June 2023 and now, one year later, filings dropped to 43,029 for the quarter. That’s still above prior years, including years before the pandemic. 

Lewandowski called it “a normalization of activity because of that somewhat anomalous growth we experienced with that fee reduction a year ago,” he said during a news conference Monday.

The new-business decline, however, coincided with a higher number of companies delinquent in renewals or filing proper documents. The number of delinquencies is up by almost 91,000 from a year ago. Overall though, the state has more companies in good standing to 963,373, up 17,500 from a year ago.

“Colorado businesses are staying in business,” Secretary of State Jena Griswold said. But, she added, “The cost of renewing a business just went up and that is because the state legislature two years ago passed increased reimbursements for county elections without funding it from the general fund.” 

That means her office has to come up with extra funding, so it’s tapping business registration fees to support the reimbursements, the office said. Filing fees for a company’s periodic reports are $25. It’d been at $10 since 2006.

The quarterly report also pointed to positive data in a weaker economy. While Colorado’s job growth has slowed from last year, the number of new jobs added is up 1.4% through June and ranked near the middle of all U.S. states for job growth. 

The number of job openings for every unemployed Coloradan is no longer two per unemployed worker, but dropped to 1.4. However, that’s better than the national ratio of 1.2 openings per unemployed worker. Colorado’s GDP also improved 2.3% between fourth quarter 2023 to first quarter this year, ranking the state 18th nationwide. 

But some other financial data is concerning, said Richard Wobbekind, faculty director of CU’s Leeds School of Business who works with Lewandowski.  It’s about consumer spending slowing and their rising debt.

“We are seeing increased delinquencies on auto loans and credit cards at this particular point in time,” he said. “There seems to be a slowing of use of credit cards even by the higher income folks who still have excess savings and the wherewithal.”

Interest rates are still high and there’s still inflation. But ultimately, the two economists are not translating the indicators as signs that the economy is receding. 

“Our office does not believe the U.S. is currently in a recession. We also don’t believe that one is imminent,” Lewandowski said. “Seeing GDP growth, seeing continued employment growth, albeit slow, seeing growth in income, seeing the labor force growth, seeing the inflation really moderate — all of this we think is good news and it doesn’t really signal that we’re on the precipice of a sharp downturn in economic activity.”  

Story first appeared in:

Months before the global pandemic, chef Troy Guard opened his first restaurant outside of Denver, a Guard and Grace steakhouse in Houston. Then COVID “kicked our butt,” he said. The restaurant eventually found its place in the city, even landing top honors in a state where beef is just part of being Texan. 

And now Guard, who began building his restaurant empire TAG Restaurant Group in Denver in 2009, is leaving Colorado for greener pastures.

“My wife and I are moving to Houston,” Guard said. “The company will still be based in Denver, but we want to grow more of the company in Houston because it’s a better climate for business and restaurants over there. … Honestly, I love Denver. I’ve been here 23 years. But it’s becoming more and more difficult every year to open restaurants. The last three restaurants have taken way too long by the city to OK, and I’m just kind of over that.”

Troy Guard, chef and owner of Guard and Grace, located in downtown Denver at 1801 California St., on July 26. (Kathryn Scott, Special to The Colorado Sun)

That’s just one beef that Guard and other top local chefs and restaurateurs have with doing business in the city these days. Higher operating costs were exacerbated by the more commonly known culprits, like inflation, which pushed up the price of not just food, but also construction, insurance, utilities and property taxes. Labor shortages fueled rising wages and new worker benefits, like the state’s paid-leave program.

But there seems to be something in particular with Denver, especially as downtown has struggled to return to its pre-pandemic heyday. Ongoing construction that ripped up 16th Street Mall hasn’t helped. While Mayor Mike Johnston’s pledge to end homelessness has minimized the number of tents pitched along sidewalks, the reputation has been difficult to ditch. For some of the biggest names in Denver dining, it feels like the city just isn’t listening. 

Juan Padro, cofounder of Culinary Creative that operates several Denver restaurants, including Michelin Bib Gourmand winners Mister Oso and Ash’Kara, first ventured out of state in 2019 with Italian eatery Sofia in New Orleans. Now the Big Easy also has a Mister Oso, and soon, another Denver original, A5 Steakhouse.

“We are looking all over,” Padro said. “We have deals that are signed in Denver that we’re going to honor, but generally, I don’t have a strong interest in doing business in Denver right now. I love Denver and want to do business in Denver. But economically, it’s just not feasible.”

How infeasible?

Culinary Creative’s Red Tops Rendezvous, a Detroit-style pizza joint that opened last summer in the Jefferson Park neighborhood, started on a high note, averaging $50,000 a week in revenue, Padro said. But when construction began last fall on Federal Boulevard, making it tough to turn onto West 25th Avenue, where the restaurant is located, sales dropped to $30,000 a week overnight. He said $36,000 was breakeven. 

“And then they ripped up 25th and we dropped to $16,000 to $18,000,” he said. “I’m under no illusion that the city doesn’t have to move forward with projects to enhance the streets and sidewalks for citizens. I support that. What I don’t understand is how the heck do they not have a plan for the businesses?”

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Instead of keeping Red Tops open and paying staff, food and other other operating costs, he temporarily closed it in June. It’s still losing money. Padro has loans to pay, plus insurance and other upkeep for the building.

“I’m losing $17,000 a month, but it’s better than losing $50,000,” Padro said.

While he’s rethinking Denver for new restaurants, he hopes to reopen Red Tops, which he said did get a $15,000 grant from the city’s Business Impact Opportunity Fund with United Way. 

“You don’t just get into the restaurant business to make money,” he said. “You get into the restaurant business for community, and because you believe in something. It’s a form of art and entertainment. So as long as the company remains healthy, and the company’s healthy, but, generally speaking, we have other restaurants that are more profitable for sure.”

During a recent weekday lunch hour at the Mercantile Dining & Provision, business seemed steady, but there was no wait to be seated as the clock ticked past 1 p.m. The restaurant, tucked into the northern end of Union Station, was one of the most anticipated openings in 2014. That’s because it’s led by Alex Seidel, the first Denver chef to earn a semifinalist nod in the prestigious James Beard Foundation awards in 2008 for Fruition. He was named Best Chef South West for Mercantile in 2018.

Alex Seidel, owner and chef, inside Mercantile Dining & Provision on July 26 in Denver. The restaurant is located downtown inside Denver’s Union Station. (Kathryn Scott, Special to The Colorado Sun)

Business hasn’t returned since COVID, at least not enough to sustain a staff of 100, which Mercantile employed prior to the pandemic. It now employs 30, he said.

“I personally have never worked in a restaurant in my entire 36-year career where it is slower on a Friday and Saturday night than it is the rest of the week,” Seidel said. “What that tells me is that there’s nobody coming down from the suburbs. The people that go out on Friday, Saturday night are no longer coming downtown.” 

It wasn’t too long ago that Seidel was excited about sharing his cooking. “You felt this great responsibility to provide something amazing for the community,” he said. He opened the fast-casual Chook Charcoal Chicken in late 2018 to “bring great food to people and it doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg.” Back then, Chook charged $20 for a whole chicken. More than five years later, it’s $21.95, or 10% higher, less than inflation for the same period.  

118 minutes

In 2018, when the state’s minimum wage was $10.20/hour, it took one hour and 58 minutes of work to pay for a whole chicken at Chook, which cost $20 at the time.

72 minutes

In 2024, with Denver’s minimum wage at $18.29/hr, it takes one hour and 12 minutes of work to pay for a whole chicken at Chook, which now costs $21.99

“We’re a certified B Corp., we have been trying to do things for all the right reasons, taking care of people and our planet,” he said. “And those restaurants have struggled in this setting. And when I say struggle, I mean they just break even.”

His northeastern Denver commissary, Füdmill, which produces pastries for his restaurants, has struggled to renew its license after the city put the licensing system online to save applicants an in-person visit to City Hall. He admits that this delay could be his fault. His applications had some missing information. But the back-and-forth emails to figure out what was missing has been such a time suck that even a James Beard award-winning chef feels hopeless. 

He took up pottery during COVID and that “has brought some peace to my life,” he said. But, he added, “I am not looking to open another restaurant. (Insert audible gasp from the interviewer.) No really. It sucked the life out of me.”

Denver. Costs. More.

The restaurant business is no picnic even with the fame and foodie fandom that can come with it. Profits are notoriously minuscule, like living from paycheck to paycheck. 

According to an analysis by point-of-sale system developer Toast, restaurant profit margins range between 0% and 15%, but the average is 3% to 5%. Larger corporate-owned chains benefit from shared costs and streamlined operations, allowing a place like Olive Garden to notch a profit margin of 22.8% despite a 1.5% drop in sales at existing locations in its latest quarter, according to parent Darden Restaurants. 

“It’s very, very difficult to make any money,” said John Imbergamo, a Denver restaurant consultant who represents award-winning chef Jen Jasinski’s restaurants Rioja, Bistro Vendome and Stoic & Genuine. “The fact is, you not only have to be busy, you also have to make money. And we’ve had a harmonic convergence of cost increases … that have all hit at once combined with pandemic relief funds, which are now running out or have run out in most cases.”

Jasinski, in fact, with Crafted Concepts partner Beth Gruitch, announced Aug. 2 that Stoic & Genuine will close in September, a decision made based on “changing market conditions” and  coinciding with an expiring lease at Union Station. They’ll also hand over two restaurants to their partners. Adam Branz  becomes sole operator of Ultreia, while Tim Kuklinski takes Bistro Vendôme. Jasinski and Gruitch will continue to operate Rioja in Larimer Square. 

“It was always our plan to turn our businesses over to our partners and let the young, fresh people run these businesses so we can take a little bit of a step back,” Jasinski said. “We weren’t thinking about closing Stoic, but that has more to do with the economy. … The pandemic changed a lot of things.”

Inflation also hit the Denver area earlier than other U.S. cities. The metro area recorded a 9.1% increase in consumer prices in March 2022, several months ahead of the nation. And while Denver’s inflation has slowed —  it fell to 2.6% in May — it hasn’t stopped.

Once raised, prices rarely go down, though corporations do try to nudge revenues higher. In late June, McDonald’s launched a $5 meal deal. It wasn’t enough to improve sales for the quarter, which fell 1% from a year earlier. But CEO Chris Kempczinski said it did the job of “improved brand perceptions around value and affordability,” reported business-news site TheStreet.

Honestly, I love Denver … But it’s becoming more and more difficult every year to open restaurants.

— Troy Guard, chef and owner of Guard and Grace

And restaurants and all businesses, really, must deal with customer perception, Imbergamo said. Sourcing fresh ingredients, maintaining a trained staff to grill a burger to perfection, and serving customers at the table, costs more than it did a few years ago. The consumer’s “value barometer is a very, very difficult thing to change,” Imbergamo said. 

“For 10 years, we’ve been telling people that a burger is worth $10 or $12. Now it’s $15 and that just doesn’t compute when it comes to the value barometer,” he said. “We can’t move that needle over to where it needs to move very easily because even though consumers understand (that) the price of goods has gone up in the grocery store, they don’t equate that necessarily to restaurants. And if they do, they still don’t care. The fact is they say, ‘Why is my burger that used to be $12 now $15?’”

But not all consumers have pulled back their spending. Guard said he’s seen sales at his lower-priced restaurants slow, but not so much at pricier places, he said. Guests at Guard and Grace, where a 22-ounce Cowboy Ribeye is $140, tend to be out-of-town visitors or business professionals with big expense accounts. 

“At Guard and Grace, which is a high-end steakhouse, we were up. In my opinion, people that go out and dine at the $100-plus check average have the money to do that,” he said. “At our HashTag restaurant, breakfast is a little bit down. … Maybe it’s summer and it’s hit and miss because people are on vacation (but) the first seven years of HashTag have gone up every year. And this year, it’s down, so not flat, but down. That’s kind of a bummer.”

Hop Alley owner Tommy Lee introduced a six-seat Chef’s Counter in February. The chef-driven tasting menu is available only by reservation, which requires a $100 deposit per person. He said 90% of Chef’s Counter customers end up spending around $230. That’s steeper than the average $65 check at Hop Alley, which earned a Bib Gourmand award from the Michelin Guide this year for “good quality, good value.”

“It’s been great because we’re generating a good amount of revenue out of the six seats,” Lee said. “It’s a lot of people from out of town because there are people seeking out these tasting menu experiences. A lot of these customers that are coming to the Chef’s Counter have never been to Hop Alley.”

The economy may be impacting consumer budgets, but restaurants are still opening in Denver, Imbergamo pointed out. According to his unofficial count — he relies on Westword’s weekly “Every Opening and Closing This Week” report — more open each month than close. 

What he doesn’t understand is why established out-of-state restaurants pick Denver, where operating costs, including minimum wage, are much higher. Denver’s hourly minimum wage is $18.29 an hour and will increase to $18.81 in January since it’s pegged to inflation. Many other states, including Texas and Louisiana, default to the federal minimum of $7.25. 

And in the land of restaurants, there’s something called the tipped credit. There are many, many complex rules around tipped credits in Colorado. But the gist is that tipped servers can be paid $3.02 less than the minimum wage, or $15.27. Meanwhile, the states that use the federal rate? The tipped minimum is a mere $2.13 an hour, which hasn’t changed since 1996.

“I can’t stress enough how much that tipped minimum wage increase every year impacts profitability because we use so many tipped employees,” Imbergamo said. “In many restaurants, some restaurant servers, bartenders are making $55, $60, $70 an hour and for them to get $1 raises is, you know, it just doesn’t really make any sense. When you multiply that dollar times the number of hours that we use in a week, in a month, in a year, that turns into a huge number for restaurants.”

The minimum wage and tipped minimum in Denver and Colorado are going up again in January. That will happen every year, as long as inflation exists. Robin Kniech, an at-large Denver city council member in 2019 who advocated for the city to break out in 2019 with its own higher minimum wage, said her support was due to the gap between stagnant wages and escalating housing prices. 

“We talk a lot about a housing crisis in Colorado, but we’ve really had a wage gap. That’s really the underlying thing that has complicated and exacerbated our housing crisis,” Kniech said. 

But she also pointed out that rising wages is just one piece of rising costs of doing business. Commercial landlords have increased rent. Food prices are up. The city policy helps the lowest-paid workers whose income makes it challenging to live in the city.

“What’s really clear (is that) leisure and hospitality employment in Denver is growing,” she said. “It grew at a rate of 5.9% last year. It’s grown every single year since the pandemic — 13.8% in 2021, 19.9% in 2022 and 5.9% in 2023. All of that is along with this wage. Each individual business may be having a variety of adjustments that they are making in this era of making sure that workers can earn closer to what it costs to live in their city. But overall, the industry is growing. It is not contracting.”

The city’s leisure and hospitality workforce has grown since the worst of the pandemic, and so has pretty much every industry, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. But at the same time, the city’s estimated 65,322 workers in such occupations is just back to where it was in 2019, as seen in the chart below. 

Kniech, now a Bell Policy Center fellow working on affordable housing projects, said the City Council couldn’t touch the tipped minimum because it was already baked into the state constitution. 

“There was a desire to talk about it and it just wasn’t on the table,” she said. “But I will tell you because I have a little mental file cabinet of the number of restaurant owners who said they could never, or would never, go to a service-fee approach (like in Europe) and that was not happening in America. That it was impossible. That was 2019. And here we are. Many restaurants have adjusted. It’s not just about government policy. It’s also about business practices.”

Dana Rodriguez, chef and owner of Carne and Work and Class, inside Carne located in RiNo at 2601 Larimer St. on July 26 in Denver. At a cutting board, she prepares olive tapenade to be served with achiote-grilled octopus. (Kathryn Scott, Special to The Colorado Sun)

Chef Dana Rodriguez may be one of the more recognized names in the local restaurant industry as the chef behind Casa Bonita’s new menu. But at the two restaurants where she is executive chef and owner, she has just 60 employees. TAG Restaurant Group employs about 500 companywide. Culinary Creative Group has 750. Darden Restaurants, which owns brands including Olive Garden and The Capital Grille, employs 190,000 globally.

Policies often apply uniformly to all. Why is that, Rodriguez wondered. She said she appreciated how Mayor Johnston talked last year about helping people who were homeless.

“He said the first thing is to divide. Some is mental health, some is addictions. And the other one is literally like they just want to live their life like that,” she said. “And I say they should look at us in the same way. There are the big corporations, there are the small independents, there are franchises and fast-food restaurants. How can we help them and them and them? The same formula doesn’t work for everyone. That’s the part that we’re missing. They don’t see us for our real needs.” 

Denver improves backlog, wait times 

And then there are delays with building permits, inspections, reviews and business licenses. Before COVID, Guard said, the city provided a time estimate on how long it would take for approvals. Now, it seems like it’s timeless.

“It used to be 90 days. Now, it could be eight months, which my last one was, and I lost my general contractor because of that. I lost my pricing because of that,” Guard said. “Then I have to reprice and then the price goes up and then I have to go to my investors. They don’t want to give me more money. It’s like this complete circus and it’s frustrating.”

City officials acknowledge that things got backed up during COVID. But commercial building permits, in particular, have been a priority of Denver’s mayor. Last year, Johnston pledged to reduce building-permit wait times by 30%. As of the end of July, the average wait time for intermediate commercial projects had been cut by 14% to 30 days. The goal is to get to 25 days by the end of the year, city spokesperson Genna Morton said. Current plan review times are posted on the city’s interactive dashboard.

“Our recent efforts have brought those review times back to what customers were experiencing pre-COVID. There’s opportunity to continue to improve and the city is focused on continuing to bring down those review times,” Morton said in an email. “Overall, our permit review times as of (July 31) are comparable to what our customers experienced 3 to 5 years ago, before the pandemic.”

The city also revamped its food licensing program by moving everything online so applicants no longer needed to show up in person. When the new system launched a year ago last month,  the average wait was 71 days. Now, it’s five, said Eric Escudero, spokesperson for the city’s Excise and Licenses department.  

“We’re seeing the fruit from the changes with the processing times. I mean the vast majority of applications are (completed) within five days,” Escudero said. 

But he understands that the new system may be confusing. Companies that just needed to renew had to start over because the new system didn’t have their old data. Escudero said the department helps anyone who asks.

“If you’re applying for a license and you’ve run into a dead end, you’re not sure what to do or are confused, we’ll meet with someone and we’ll coordinate with those other city agencies,” he said. 

According to city licensing data, the number of retail food establishments has increased in Denver since 2021, but it declined 4.4% to 3,947 businesses this year. (Escudero said older data before 2021 is unreliable.) Statewide, the Department of Revenues’ sales tax data shows that the number of active food services and drinking establishments in Colorado is higher than it was before the pandemic. 

Permit delays have long been part of commercial projects, which include restaurants. But the convergence of inflation, pandemic recovery and a slower summer has just made restaurant operations more challenging, Ibergamo said.

“Restaurants used to be the place that people who didn’t have a ton of money could open, could find a spot that had a grease trap and make some minor changes to the way the place looked and get open,” Imbergamo said. “That’s kind of gone.” 

How chefs decide to increase menu prices

Higher prices are an issue consumers face at nearly every income level. But not all restaurants have effectively shared why menu prices are higher.

Rodriguez gave it a shot: “This restaurant is a $2.3 million restaurant,” she said referring to the revenue at her award-winning Work and Class in Denver’s RiNo neighborhood. “And then when you look at the expenses, it’s $1.9 million. “And you’re like, ‘Why even open?’” 

That’s roughly a 17% profit margin, and her most profitable restaurant, largely because the staff is small with 31 employees. And call her crazy, or uncorporate-like or just someone who wants to do right by her staff and the community. Her workers have benefits. They support one another, which meant covering health insurance for an employee who spent three years fighting cancer and was unable to work.  Customers waiting for a table can order a discounted mixed drink, for $4. But every year, costs continued to rise. 

As the cost of Colorado lamb rose, she pulled it off the menu at Work and Class to avoid raising prices. 

“And people said, ‘What?’ Yeah, now I can serve chicken, pork, veal, the meats that are more affordable. And people who say, ‘What the f—, we want our lamb back’ (and) I say, ‘Are you willing to pay market price?’” she said. “That’s why all the menus now you see market price for oysters, for lamb, for steaks, for caviar (so) you don’t get stuck as an owner feeling, ‘Oh, I’m losing more and more every time.’”

She brought lamb back at double the price. It’s currently going for $64.75 a pound, up from $28.75 a decade ago when the restaurant opened.

216 minutes

In 2014, when Denver’s minimum wage was at $8/hr, it took three hours and 36 minutes of work to pay for the lamb dish at Work and Class, which charged $28.75 back then.

212.5 minutes

In 2024, with Denver’s minimum wage at $18.29/hr, it would take 3 hours and 33.5 minutes of work to pay for the lamb dish at Work and Class, which now costs $64.75.

Restaurants hate to raise prices though because of customer perception, said Lee, whose restaurants, Uncle and Hop Alley, serve up ramen and regional Chinese cuisine, respectively. But they have to figure out a way to make a business sustainable.

“I was looking at our prices and our ramen has only increased by, I think, $4 in 12 years when it should probably have increased by $10,” Lee said. “We’re lucky, you know. I think our restaurants are relatively busy in general, like every day, and we’ve just had to kind of get creative with how we bend our models to make it work.”

105 minutes

In 2014, when Denver’s minimum wage at $8/hr, it took one hour and 45 minutes of work to pay for a bowl of Uncle’s Chashu ramen, which cost $14 back then.

63 minutes

In 2024, with Denver’s minimum wage at $18.29/hr, it takes one hour and 3 minutes of work to pay for a bowl of Uncle’s Chashu ramen, which now costs $19.

Lee said that right before the interview, he was texting another restaurant owner about how some places are adding a credit-card surcharge to their bills. Among his three restaurants, Lee said he pays “a hundred-and-something thousand” a year in credit card fees. 

“And if you were to pass on that 2%, which the customer would barely notice probably, you could cover your credit card fees. But to a customer seeing that, it’s like, ‘Hey, why are you charging me $1.25?’” he said. “But we can’t just eat the cost of everything that’s going up.”

For him, the restaurant business is a marathon with good years and bad years. He’s had more good years than bad so he feels fortunate. But 2024 may be one of the bad ones. Lee has a business degree so when he started out, he was always thinking about sustainability.  

LEFT: Tommy Lee, owner and chef of Uncle, inside his restaurant’s West Wash Park location at 95 S. Pennsylvania St. in Denver on July 26. RIGHT: Line cook Hilario Gregorio prepares Chinese eggplant inside Uncle. (Kathryn Scott, Special to The Colorado Sun)

“At the two Uncle locations, we have open kitchens where the cooks are also helping serve customers. So we can legally put them as part of our tip pool, which helps pay your cooks through a different method and outside your bottom line,” he said. 

In Colorado, wait staff can’t share tips with the kitchen crew unless those workers interact with patrons and provide customer service. In order to pool tips, all staff must earn the full minimum wage, and not just the tipped minimum.

Jasinski said that her restaurants opted to skip the tipped-minimum savings and pay everyone minimum wage so that the kitchen crew, who are doing all the prep and cooking, can share tips. That started after 2019 when the city of Denver approved its own minimum wage, which initially was 7.1% higher than the state. Now, it’s nearly 27% more.  

Padro tested out a service fee at Highland Tap and Burger, the first restaurant he opened in Denver back in 2010. Then they rolled out a 20% service fee at all 18 restaurants that is shared with its nontipped kitchen crews. Customers are told that no tip is required, but some consumers call such fees “sneaky” and vow to never return. One Reddit thread tallied up Colorado restaurants with fees and the restaurant’s explanations.

But it’s really helped the rest of the staff. The restaurants still had to raise prices. At Tap and Burger, it’s still busy but profit has slid, Padro said.

“Volume in our restaurants? For sure, people are there. We have some really busy restaurants. It’s just not translating into profit,” he said. “In 2017, Highlands Tap and Burger did $3.7 million or $3.8 million in sales and a profit of $900,000. Last year, it did $3.3 million in sales and profited $30,000.”

Is it just Denver?

It’s still challenging even for someone like Rodriguez, who has won multiple best-chef awards. Sadly, she said, she made the hard decision to close her first solo venture, Cantina Loca, on April 29. Higher costs for food and labor plus declining number of patrons did in the 2-year-old Loca, she said.

“My employees start working at 8 in the morning to prep. And then at nighttime, come to cook at 4 p.m. but no one shows up from 4 to 6, so you already lose money in the first two hours. And then you make money only two, and lose money the other three,” she said. “That’s when I decided the numbers are not making sense. I put all my savings to save a restaurant and then I say, I’m hurting myself and my other businesses. It’s a hard decision that investors will never understand. And maybe the community will never understand. It’s so sad when people hear you are closing and are like, ‘Oh my God, she was my favorite.’ And I’m like, ‘But where have you been?’”

Of course, Rodriguez is a little … loca. Two months and a few days later, she opened Carne, a globally inspired steakhouse “for everyday” in Denver’s RiNo neighborhood. She says she wasn’t going to do it. She says she probably shouldn’t have done it.  

“I was down. I was sad. And the next day, literally, I’m like, ‘I’m not f-ing done.’ I guess I have this strength that I’m going to keep going whether it is here, whether it be somewhere else,” she said. “This is the only thing I know how to do and I love it.”

The “everyday” menu items may be more expensive than grilling steaks at home. But for the extra service, flavor and overall dining experience, Carne’s menu has dishes that seem tricky to cook at home, like the Argentinian Bife de Chorizo, which at $29 is about the same price as a bacon cheeseburger, large fries and milkshake at Five Guys ($26.37, before tax).

She still doesn’t feel Denver is the easiest place to open a restaurant, even if it took a mere two months to turn the old Il Posto location into a sexy, ’70s-inspired hangout complete with an upstairs lounge with shag carpeting, low-slung seats and Playboy magazines hiding behind a beaded curtain. She considered other states. Nearby cities also tried to woo her.

She picked Denver. RiNo specifically, because it’s an active nightspot that translates into multiple hours of activity. It helped Work and Class, located a few blocks away. Both are open Wednesday to Sunday, mainly for dinner “’til close.”

She wishes someone at the city would just listen “with their heart.”

“I have a fake sign because I’ve been waiting three months for a permit. If they come and they want me to take it down, I have to pay a fine. They are not very helpful in trying to build more businesses,” she said. “It feels like they’re saying, ‘Dana, you don’t need to open another restaurant.’ And I’m like, ‘No, I do need to open another one.’ ‘No, you don’t.’ And I’m like, well then if I close all my restaurants and Troy closes restaurants and Jen closes restaurants and Alex, what do you got in Denver? Do you want just Applebee’s?”

In the past two weeks in downtown Denver, Bonanno Concepts announced a temporarily closing of French 75 on 17th Street (via Westword), Cholon Restaurant Concept’s Bistro LeRoux shuttered on 16th Street (via Denver Post), and the aforementioned Stoic & Genuine is closing on Sept. 1. 

But coming soon, two new restaurants will debut inside the funky new Populus hotel near Civic Center park; South Carolina import Church and Union may finally open on 17th Street (via 303 Magazine); and (ahem) two more from Guard, including a HashTag on 17th Street and Swedish import, Eggs, on Wewatta Street, which Guard is opening with former Avalanche hockey player Peter Forsberg. 

Guard said it’s hard to say if he’d be moving to Texas if the permit delays had never happened. 

“I love Denver. I have the brand here and, yes, we want to continue to grow. But this was just one more push that says ‘Troy, you’ve got to get up and get out of the city and go somewhere else to continue the growth.’ I kept my roots here, but I believe in signs. I don’t know why but this is a sign. It’s time for your family to get up and move and try something new and grow the company somewhere else,” he said.

Jasinski is eager to focus on her first born, Rioja, which she and Gruitch opened in 2004. It’s won multiple best chef and restaurant honors. So, instead of running around operating four restaurants, she’ll return to the kitchen. They just signed a 20-year lease.

“There were times I didn’t cook all week and that was a bummer for me,” she said. “But you know, Beth and I have wanted to do this plan. We’ve taken these people, we’ve taught them and they’re wonderful people and we want them to shine on their own, have new ideas and do cool things like that. Let me get out of the way.”

A new city, new people and new food experiences invigorate many a chef, and that’s probably the sentiment Guard, Jasinski and others felt when they landed in Denver years ago. 

“There’s always a new crop of people who have worked their lives in restaurants and are now looking for the opportunity to do one of their own. And that’s what keeps the Denver restaurant scene vibrant,” Imbergamo said. “The base premise is that it’s an industry that thrives on creativity and opportunity and hard work. That premise remains in place no matter what the economics are. It’s just harder.”

Tamara Chuang

Business/Technology Reporter

As investors dealt with stock market chaos triggered by last week’s weak U.S. job report, local economists who track the job market noted nearly the same thing: the response was overblown.

“I think the initial market response wasn’t really justified by the U.S. jobs report — the increase in the unemployment rate was driven by more job-seekers, not a decrease in the number of people who are working,” said Bill Craighead, executive director of the University of Colorado Colorado Springs Economic Forum.

The national report was underwhelming as the U.S. unemployment rate in July rose to 4.3%, more than a half a percentage point from its low in the past year. That’s the trigger for a recession, according to the so-called Sahm Rule, named for the former Fed economist Claudia Sahm. The rule says that by the time there’s been a half-point rise, “a recession is almost always already underway,” though Sahm said last week a recession isn’t imminent, AP reported.

Colorado’s July numbers should be out next week. The state’s June unemployment rate was 3.8%, the same as May, but already past the Sahm Rule since the jobless rate was 3.2% in July 2023. Monthly reports are preliminary though and tend to get revised.

Colorado has also seen a job-growth slowdown this year, but that’s been expected. Much of the rapid growth in the past three years was about recovering jobs lost in the first two months of the pandemic. The state’s back to where it was before the pandemic and still seeing some growth.

“These job growth numbers have a large margin of error. So most any reaction done to the numbers is an overreaction,” said Jeffrey Zax, an economics professor and associate chair of the undergraduate Department of Economics at University of Colorado Boulder. “And these numbers get revised. … My belief is that the stock market, as you can see from this past week, sometimes responds with great volatility to the initial reports. They don’t respond to the corrections.”

On Friday, the U.S. stock market was up again. The S&P 500, which had plummeted 3% on Monday, recovered most of Monday’s losses by Friday’s close.

The 30-year fixed mortgage rate has fallen to 6.54%, about where it was two years ago, according to Mortgage News Daily.

Colorado’s labor market is still considered tight, even just below 4%. If employers can’t find enough people to fill job openings, the business either increases wages or adjusts operations to rely on fewer employees. But that can limit the company’s own growth. 

“Remember,” Zax added, “job growth is only one piece of the equation. If everybody’s already got a job then jobs grow even further, that’s certainly good for workers. It makes their wages go up. But it’s not great for businesses because that means that their costs are going up as well.”

The 3.8% unemployment rate in June translates to 124,400 unemployed Coloradans looking for a job compared with 3.1 million who have one. Back in June 2015 when the state’s rate was again at 3.8%, there were 106,790 unemployed workers looking for work compared with 2.7 million people who had a job.

Craighead said he also looks at who is working. In the 25-to-54-year-old age group — considered the “prime working age” of the employment population — 80.9% of the U.S. population is employed, “the highest since 2001,” he said, though he pointed out that June and July 2023 also hit 80.9%.

Colorado’s rate was 84.3% in the 12-months ending in June, according to state Department of Labor and Employment data. It had dropped to 79.9% in 2020 during the pandemic.

He’s “cautiously optimistic” that we’ll avoid a recession, but that may depend on the Federal Reserve deciding how fast to cut interest rates.

“That said, there are still definite signs of the national labor market cooling, with slowing wage growth and fewer job openings,” Craighead said. “While that was needed to some extent, you don’t want it to go too far. I think it’s also pretty clear that inflation is under control. So, I think the Fed missed an opportunity by not cutting rates.”

More Colorado job news:

➔ Unemployment claims: Approximately, 2,785 Coloradans filed an initial claim for unemployment during the week ended Aug. 3, or 60 more than a week prior. That compared with a weekly average of 1,900 in 2019. Continued claims, which are approved initial claims, grew by 998 to 28,155 for the week ended July 27, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. In 2019, continued claims averaged 18,600 a week.

➔ Where have Colorado’s construction workers gone? The state lost 4,200 construction jobs between June 2023 to June 2024. Denver economist Ryan Gedney wondered why in his The Stat Guy newsletter. One possible reason: Colorado wages are pretty high compared with other states (sixth-highest among private employers), but when it comes to average construction pay, we’re ranked 15th or 16th. The state’s median pay for construction work ranked 19th. >> Read

➔ TIAA gives 1,000 workers a 2-year heads up that it’s leaving Denver. Financial services company TIAA told its employees Tuesday that it’s moving the operation to its headquarters in Frisco, Texas, The Denver Post reported first. In an email to The Colorado Sun, TIAA spokesman Mike Tetuan said the lease for part of the 36-story building on Broadway ends in 2029, so vacating in 2026 “will provide substantial savings in rent and operational costs — savings which TIAA can then invest in business needs and serve the best interests of our clients.” He didn’t answer a question about whether savings would be even greater if they moved out earlier, but added that this gives employees a two-year heads-up. Most roles will move to Texas and “with associates having the option to relocate,” he said.

➔ Larimer County’s mental health center lays off 75 people, blames rise in uninsured and Medicaid reform. Three of Colorado’s community mental health centers have laid off employees this summer. >> Read story

Sun economy stories you may have missed

➔ All the new minimum wages in Colorado that kick in Jan. 1. Here’s why they go up every year in Denver, Boulder County, Edgewater and the whole state of Colorado. >> Read story

➔ Plan to drill 166 wells near Aurora Reservoir OK’d with requirement to use cleaner, quieter electric equipment. Lowry Ranch neighbors aren’t ending the fight, saying they will pressure Colorado regulators on safety, noise and wildlife disturbances as the individual drilling sites are considered. >> Read story

➔ Colorado once again breaks tourism records with 31% increase in travelers in the last decade. Colorado hosted 93.3 million visitors who spent $28.3 billion in 2023. Spending by tourists supported 188,000 jobs and generated $1.8 billion in state and local tax revenue in 2023. >> Read story

➔ Colorado resort communities want to impose a vacancy tax on unoccupied homes. The legislative agenda for the Colorado Association of Ski Towns includes a first-ever vacancy tax as well as a real estate transfer fee on all property sales to help fund affordable housing. >> Read story

➔ A Denver pediatrician helped make some of the biggest pandemic vaccine decisions. Here’s what he thinks now. Dr. Matthew Daley ended his term on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in June. The committee makes recommendations about whether and how vaccines should be given. >> Read story

➔ Births in metro Denver are falling faster than much of the country. Here’s what it means for the future. >> Read story

Other working bits

➔ More Colorado locations eligible for broadband funding. After challenges were made, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration gave its final approval to Colorado locations eligible for broadband investment. That means internet providers hoping to tackle the infrastructure in those communities can start making plans and ultimately, pitch the Colorado Broadband Office. See the list here. The state received $826.5 million in federal funding for the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment Program, which was part of the Infrastructure Act, passed by Congress in 2021. >> Details

➔ The $600-per-classroom grant gets 9,000 applicants. But Colorado can only fund 5,000 of them, according to the Governor’s Office, which earlier this week announced $2.7 million was available for Colorado educators to buy supplies for their classrooms. The program, in partnership with DonorsChoose, had 9,000 projects submitted in the first 24 hours. What the state can’t cover will be funded by the DonorsChoose network of individuals and corporate partners. >> Details

➔ Denver janitors agree on new contract. Pushing negotiations to the nearly the end of their contract, janitors who clean 1,500 buildings in the Denver metro area came to a tentative agreement with their employers. The new contract provides “historic wage increases of 16% to 18% across the Denver Metro,” as well as guaranteed paid sick leave and workplace safety protections, according to union organizers at Service Employees International Union Local 105. >> Details

Got some economic news or business bits Coloradans should know? Tell us: cosun.co/heyww

Thanks for sticking with me for this week’s report. Remember to check out The Sun’s daily coverage online. As always, share your 2 cents on how the economy is keeping you down or helping you up at cosun.co/heyww. ~ tamara

Note: This story was updated at 8:19 a.m. on August 10, 2024 to clarify the labor force participation rate of U.S. and Colorado workers between ages 25 to 54.

Miss a column? Catch up:

• As food-insecurity funds end, Colorado farmers focus on food hub
• Colorado top-paying and lowest-paying jobs
• Repurposing old stuff in Colorado can be profitable
• Despite setbacks, a Durango builder is framing affordable houses in under a month
• What consumers and businesses need to know about Colorado’s “Do not sell my data” law
• Colorado employers may finally have found enough workers
• How a Denver company is fighting the problem of underemployment
• Why Colorado could start attracting more filmmakers

What’s Working is a Colorado Sun column about surviving in today’s economy. Email tamara@coloradosun.com with stories, tips or questions. Read the archive, ask a question at cosun.co/heyww and don’t miss the next one by signing up at coloradosun.com/getww.

Support this free newsletter and become a Colorado Sun member: coloradosun.com/join

The Colorado Sun is part of The Trust Project. Read our policies.

Corrections & Clarifications

Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.

The minimum wage in Colorado and a few local governments is going up again Jan. 1. 

The raising of the minimum wage has been an annual event for the state and the city of Denver for years and, starting this year, Edgewater and Boulder County joined in. That’s because all are tied to the change in the Consumer Price Index, also known as inflation.

Denver’s rate will jump 52 cents next year to $18.81 an hour, up from the current $18.29. Colorado’s is tentatively increasing 39 cents to $14.81, from $14.42. The state’s official new wage will be announced around Labor Day, according to state labor department officials.

Edgewater is on track to raise its minimum to wage to $16.52, from $15.02 this year. Boulder County will increase to $16.57, from the current $15.69.

It wasn’t always this way. In 2006, the minimum wage was the same in Denver, Colorado and the U.S. That changed in 2007 after Colorado voters passed an amendment to boost the minimum and peg it to increases in the CPI (there’s no change if CPI decreases). Then in 2019, Denverites voted to break away from the state and set a higher minimum. The federal minimum, meanwhile, hasn’t increased since 2010. It’s still $7.25 per hour.  

But not all Colorado minimum wages are rising at an equal rate. That’s because Colorado uses CPI-U for urban consumers, which was up 2.7%. Denver uses CPI-W for wage earners, which increased 2.84%.  The calculation is based on the first half of the year compared to the year-ago index.

And because Boulder County and Edgewater just adopted the local wage last year, state law gives them leeway to increase the minimum faster than inflation — up to $1.75 or 15%, whichever is higher.

Edgewater’s rate will increase 10%, the most of the four in 2025, because the city is aiming to get to $21.99 by 2029. That still puts the city’s minimum wage lower than Denver’s, which is “just across Sheridan Boulevard,” City Manager Dan Maples said in an email.

It hasn’t been a full year with the new wage, but Maples said he hasn’t heard any pushback from the business community so far.

“We did hear that the legislation helped corporate-owned businesses pay higher wages. One corporate business told us that they are required to pay the minimum and if the minimum is the state, that’s what is paid. With our local minimum the organization now had to pay the higher rate. The company we talked with about this was very appreciative as they said it helped that store be more competitive in the area,” Maples said.

Behind the annual increases

Local governments were allowed to enact their own minimum wage starting in 2020, after House Bill 1210 passed in 2019, though the law limited it to no more than 33 local governments, or 10% of local governments.

Denver jumped on board immediately and had its ordinance ready to go in 2020, the first year of a city minimum wage, said Robin Kniech, an at-large Denver city council member at the time who had also advocated for the state to allow it. She’s now a fellow at Bell Policy Center working on affordable housing. 

“Of course, (we didn’t know) a pandemic was coming but we’d had a long period of economic growth,” Kniech said. “Evidence was very clear. I still have the PowerPoint that shows the line of how housing prices have increased and how wages have stagnated.” 

The intention was also to address the wage inequality for women and racial minorities who were some of the lowest earners, according to the Economic Policy Institute, she said. And the Denver City Council chose to align annual increases with CPI “because what we know from federal research is that when you fail to keep up with the cost of living, wages erode over time. That’s a best practice nationally.”

Many business organizations came out against minimum wage increases when the state broached the topic as well as the city of Denver. Carly West, vice president of policy for the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce acknowledged that the city’s intention was to “improve workers’ livelihoods,” but it’s the broader impact on smaller businesses that has taken a toll.

“We have heard from members who are small business owners who have had to cut hours and reduce staff due to the financial strain of keeping up with wage increases,” West said in an email. “We have previously stated that the primary driver of the cost of living challenges in Colorado is the housing market. … Addressing housing affordability through increased housing supply and construction litigation reform is crucial to creating a more balanced approach to improving economic conditions for workers while sustaining local businesses.”

Tipped minimum wages are also increasing

It’s been especially painful for Denver-area restaurants. Restaurants statewide can pay tipped workers less than minimum wage, but only up to $3.02 less per hour.

In Denver, that puts the tipped workers at $15.27 an hour, excluding tips. Because of CPI, the tipped wage will rise to $15.79 next year. Since 2019 to today, the city’s tipped minimum wage has increased 89%, compared with the city’s minimum wage, which is up 64.8% in the same five-year period.

“I feel like all the people making decisions on our behalf, they have no clue. They may come from a good place and they think they are helping employees, but at the end of the day, if they hurt the business, they hurt employees,” said Dana Rodriguez, an award winning chef in Denver who closed her first solo venture, Cantina Loca, in April. “The minimum wage is killing our businesses. Like, literally, that’s one of the reasons why I closed one of my restaurants. It hurts a lot.” 

The Colorado Restaurant Association opposed Denver’s measure because of the impact on the tipped minimum wage. Tipped workers make more money in general because of tips. But the kitchen crew and other nontipped employees who don’t serve customers directly can’t share in any sort of tip pool unless everyone is paid at least the minimum wage. 

After the ordinance passed in 2019, the Crafted Concepts restaurant group, which includes Rioja and Stoic and Genuine, moved all staff to minimum wage or higher. 

“We wanted to give the kitchen what we think is a fair shake. We wanted them to get tips,” Jen Jasinski, Crafted Concepts partner as well as chef and owner of Rioja. “We have one of the highest minimum wages in the whole country and people wonder why stuff goes up.”

Jasinski and her Crafted Concepts partner announced last week that they would close Stoic and Genuine, due to “changing market conditions” and coinciding with an expiring lease at Union Station. She said the decision wasn’t just about labor costs, but added, “labor is through the roof in Denver.”

Kniech said that state law built the tip credit of $3.02 into the Constitution so “it just wasn’t on the table” when it came up in City Council in 2019, she said. But, she added, “There are things that could change at the state level regarding that but at this point, indications are that the industry is adjusting writ large.”

The Colorado labor department released a report last year about the economic impact of the higher minimum wage. While the study pointed out that Denver’s sales tax revenues and unemployment rates “did not suffer relative to other parts of the state” immediately after going into effect. But then the pandemic disruptions began and Denver’s economy was hit harder because of COVID-19. 

However, despite suffering greater impact during the pandemic, the “city’s sales tax revenues at restaurants and bars increased” at a faster rate than the state and comparable cities and counties. Earnings also rose faster than the rest of the state. 

More locals considering their own wage

Other local governments are still considering their own wage as well. A regional group that includes the cities of Boulder, Louisville, Longmont, Lafayette and Erie combined efforts to do an economic analysis for the region and by city. Presentations to city officials are planned for August and September, according to the cities.  

Boulder City Council will hear an economic presentation report on Aug. 22, said Lauren Folkerts, a council member who’s been involved with the regional effort.

“Around Colorado, we’ve seen cost of living increases have been pretty significant and the minimum wage is one of many tools we have to make it easier for people to make ends meet in our community,” Folkerts said. “It’s definitely not the only thing but it’s important for us to be looking at it. We’ve seen our food bank usage increase dramatically since prior to the pandemic. The rates of kids in the Boulder Valley School District system that experience homelessness in the school year is higher than it’s been in a long time. This is really about making it more affordable for people in our community.”

Parker Yamasaki

Reporter

Note from this newsletter’s usual author: After meeting Roberto Meza at this 528-person dinner table, I connected him to my colleague Parker Yamasaki to dig into how his little farm in Bennett became a founding leg of the East Denver Food Hub and more. Enjoy! ~ tamara

Roberto Meza doesn’t need to close his eyes to visualize a changing food system anymore, he’s watching it happen week to week. The latest evidence: 600 containers of microgreens delivered to the Aurora Public Schools for the district’s “Farm Fresh Fridays” program.

“That is awesome,” Meza said. “What once was just a garnish in upscale fine dining is now replacing lettuce for students. They get way more nutrition and crunch and flavor. Now I know that’s possible. The goal is to replicate it.”

When Meza talks about changing the food system, he really means the whole system, including government subsidies that drive prices and guide institutional decision-making. Decisions like what schools are going to feed students.

The Colorado Sun first visited Meza and his cofounder, David Demerling, five years ago, as the two fresh-eyed, first generation farmers were gaining traction with their microgreen farm, Emerald Gardens.

Then the pandemic ripped through the restaurant industry. Until that point, Emerald Gardens was sustained by the food industry, so Meza and Demerling shifted their focus. They’d always had an eye on social justice and food equity, but the sudden vulnerability kicked them into high gear.

Filling the food system gaps

It started with food boxes for shelters and WIC recipients — a federal program that subsidizes healthy food for women, infants and children.

They prototyped the program in a shipping container on their land, and quickly realized “this is a whole separate thing,” Meza said. In March 2021, they moved into a 14,000-square-foot warehouse in northeastern Denver and opened the East Denver Food Hub.

A “hub” is the perfect way to describe their venture. The warehouse is currently a headquarters for three food supply businesses: Meza and Demerling’s Food Hub, their new nonprofit, the Ag and Food Lab, and a Mexican grocery store distributor, Altitude Produce. There are also rows of shelves reserved for Ela Family Farms, a back wall used by Ekar Farm, a room stacked high with sacks of beans (about 100,000 pounds by Meza’s estimate, from a farmer in Boulder), and a side room occupied by the Village Exchange Center.

“It’s kind of like this food ecosystem,” Meza said, standing in the middle of the warehouse, while two men loaded pallets of onions into the back of a semitruck. “That’s partly what has allowed us to understand the full food system so well. So our work moves forward through the gaps that we see.”

When they started the Food Hub in 2021, that gap was connecting underserved populations to fresh food. The U.S. Department of Agriculture noticed this gap too, and in December of that year authorized more than $400 million in American Rescue Plan Assistance, or ARPA funds, for states to procure local food —food grown within 400 miles — for underserved communities. The USDA strongly encouraged states to spend their funds on “socially disadvantaged producers,” which they defined as a group whose members have been discriminated against due to race, sex, age, disability or a number of other factors.

Colorado was the first state to sign onto the federal program, a mouthful known as the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program, or LFPA for short. The state received nearly $4 million in funds during the first round of handouts. As the program expanded over the past two years, the federal government sent out close to $900 million total, and Colorado received close to $12 million.

Those funds were distributed to 34 applicants in the state and have been used to purchase food from over 100 local producers. The money also had a huge impact on places like the East Denver Food Hub, which received funds directly and through the purchases by food banks and shelters that received LFPA money.

But the funds are set to expire in April 2025, and according to the Colorado Department of Human Services, there is currently no way to continue the program.

“We don’t have a pandemic, but we didn’t solve hunger”

With the federal funds receding, Meza and Demerling are getting ready to pivot, again.

“We don’t have a pandemic, but we didn’t solve hunger,” Meza said. “What we learned during that time is that local procurement, investing in local infrastructure and workforce development, that’s how you solve hunger. It’s not just through donations of food.”

Meza envisions a system that addresses food insecurity and equity while also accounting for the health of “all beings” along the supply chain, he said. But that requires a big shift in cultural attitudes toward food and a heavy lift from government subsidies. It’s a project that the LFPA started, but it still has a long way to go.

“Whether we like it or not, we’re competing against a highly subsidized industrial food system,” Meza said. “It operates on low costs at the expense of labor practices, sustainable operations and animal welfare.”

In fall 2023, Meza and Demerling founded a nonprofit organization, the Ag and Food Lab, to help new farmers incubate their businesses. The farmers work on the Emerald Gardens land in Bennett and receive infrastructure and business help through the Lab. When the crops are ready to go, they become part of East Denver Food Hub’s procurements, heading out to pantries, shelters, schools and hospitals, as well as high-end restaurants like The Wolf’s Tailor, which received one of Colorado’s first Michelin stars last year.

Farming can be isolating, Meza said, and part of the incentive for starting the lab was to make sure new and immigrant farmers have a support network and access to chefs who can showcase their products.

But it is also about economics. When Meza and Demerling shifted from solely growing microgreens to running a full food hub, they focused largely on food justice initiatives. And the initiatives, “as necessary as they are, can’t affect our bottom line,” Meza said.

“The world is not prepared for the food system that we’re practicing, so we kind of have to do both at the same time,” he said, about operating for-profit and nonprofit businesses alongside each other. “This is our time to really rebuild the foundation. And there’s no reason why we can’t adjust our economics to accommodate that, knowing that it’s actually going to benefit everybody.”

Section by Parker Yamasaki | Reporter

If you’ve benefited from the LFPA, or know producers or distributors that are working to make local food more accessible, please email Parker at parker@coloradosun.com.

Sun economy stories you may have missed

➔ The Colorado community of Stagecoach is paradise to its residents. A luxury resort could turn it upside down. The same developers that turned Big Sky, Montana, into a resort town for billionaires are moving ahead with plans to bring luxury homes and a golf course to northwestern Colorado. Those who live there are raising concerns. >> Read story

➔ A new Colorado hospital opens this weekend. It’s built with the lessons of COVID in mind. Lutheran Medical Center is moving from its longtime home in Wheat Ridge to a new campus near Interstate 70 and West 40th Avenue. >> Read story

➔ Alarming reports about PERA’s finances spark questions about future of the state’s pension. A legislative oversight panel is considering whether to recommend further reforms to the Colorado Public Employees’ Retirement Association. >> Read story

➔ Colorado water officials dream big, team up after feds drop $450 million for water projects. The surge of funds paves the way for large, multibenefit projects addressing drought and water conservation in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. >> Read story

Got some economic news or business bits Coloradans should know? Tell us: cosun.co/heyww

Other working bits

➔ Denver’s minimum wage increasing to $18.81 in January. The city of Denver just released how much its minimum wage is going up in 2025: 52 cents. That’s 2.8% higher than the existing $18.29. While this is expected because the city’s wage is based on inflation, this also translates into a 69.5% increase since 2019, when Denver broke away from the state to set its own minimum wage. Colorado’s wage next year is set to go up as well, though officials have not announced the new amount. It’ll likely be similar to Denver’s increase, which would put Colorado’s minimum wage in 2025 at around $14.82 an hour. >> Denver’s wage update

➔ Denver airport traffic up 9.2% in first six months of 2024. Numbers-wise, that translates into 39,937,380 passengers who came, went or just passed through Denver International Airport, aka DEN. Each month also set a record, airport officials said. International traffic also grew, up 17.2% compared with the same period a year ago. But DEN does expect growth to slow for the rest of the year because it may be hard to top 2023’s huge travel year (remember the passport delays that even had a Colorado senator asking for answers?). Based on the first five months of this year, Denver ranked as the nation’s third busiest airport by the Airports Council International, and sixth busiest in the world.

• Related: The airport has 300 job openings. And there’s going to be an in-person job fair to fill them. Scheduled for Aug. 13 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., around 50 airport-related employers are expected with openings at airlines, airport food and restaurants, rental car companies and more (massage therapists!). To check it out, take the RTD A Line, which will lead right to the job fair, located on the plaza between the Westin Hotel and Jeppesen Terminal near the south security checkpoint. Otherwise, airport parking is $7 an hour. >> Details and registration

➔ LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman headlining Denver’s AI event. The upcoming DenAI Summit, a first city-led conference on artificial intelligence, just named more speakers who will be at the Sept. 19 event at the Colorado Convention Center. Besides Hoffman, who will join Denver Mayor Mike Johnston in a fireside chat, there’s also Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, CEO of Promise, a California payment processor for utilities and governments, and two CEOs from Denver companies: Bryan Leach, with retail app Ibotta, and Bijal Shah, with Guild, which connects everyday workers to educational opportunities. >> Details

➔ Disaster prep? SBA shares guide for small businesses. The guide includes best practices and templates to help small business owners plan and recover from disasters. >> Find it here

➔ Want to paint a mural along Denver trails? Denver Parks & Recreation has an open call for mural artists to paint something cool along the city’s trail system. Three artists will be chosen based on how they’d interpret Denver’s natural resources when it comes to water, urban forest, landscape transformation, habitat protection and environmental stewardship. Commissions pay $6,000 each. Submit a proposal by Aug. 25 because the installations start “Summer/Fall 2024,” which is … now! >> Details at denvergov.org/nature

Section by Tamara Chuang | Business/Technology Reporter

Thanks for sticking with me for this week’s report. Remember to check out The Sun’s daily coverage online. As always, share your 2 cents on how the economy is keeping you down or helping you up at cosun.co/heyww. ~ tamara

Miss a column? Catch up:

• Colorado top-paying and lowest-paying jobs
• Repurposing old stuff in Colorado can be profitable
• Despite setbacks, a Durango builder is framing affordable houses in under a month
• What consumers and businesses need to know about Colorado’s “Do not sell my data” law
• Colorado employers may finally have found enough workers
• How a Denver company is fighting the problem of underemployment
• Why Colorado could start attracting more filmmakers
• New broadband laws to help Colorado streamline distribution of $800+ million

What’s Working is a Colorado Sun column about surviving in today’s economy. Email tamara@coloradosun.com with stories, tips or questions. Read the archive, ask a question at cosun.co/heyww and don’t miss the next one by signing up at coloradosun.com/getww.

Support this free newsletter and become a Colorado Sun member: coloradosun.com/join

The Colorado Sun is part of The Trust Project. Read our policies.

Corrections & Clarifications

Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.

Tamara Chuang

Business/Technology Reporter

Quick links: Highest and lowest wages | FAMLI updates | Denver janitors may strike | Kroger/Albertson’s merger paused

Fast food cooks kept the top spot as Colorado’s lowest-paid occupation by averaging an annual wage of $33,251 last year. On the opposite end, neurologists retained their top rank as the highest, averaging $409,685, according to the latest wage report from the state’s labor department.

The annual report, based on Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics data, offers one of the most comprehensive looks at how much workers in Colorado earn. State labor department analysts just released their take on it, providing a plethora of charts for additional context. One insight? They looked at how hourly wages changed between 2013 and 2023, as seen in the chart below.

For food preparation and serving-related jobs, those average wages soared 78.1% in 10 years, and had the highest growth rate of all major occupations for wage growth. When adjusted for employer costs, the historic increase dropped to 18.58%, which was still one of the highest pay bumps for all occupations, said Barb Wills, lead technical analyst for the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment OEWS program.

“You kind of expect high wage occupational groups to (be) increasing so this was encouraging,” she said. “It was nice to see them catching up.”

The most obvious contributor is the state’s higher minimum wage, which is pegged to inflation. In that same 10-year period, the state’s minimum wage has shot up 75.4%, while in Denver, where the majority of food workers are, the minimum wage is up 122.2%.

There’s more to it, said Ryan Gedney, a Denver economist known as “The Stat Guy.” Colorado’s tight labor market before the pandemic was a big contributor as demand for workers pushed salaries higher. 

In Gedney’s calculations of wage data, Colorado’s overall median annual income rose 21.9% between 2015 and 2019, ranking the state third highest nationwide. But between 2019 and 2023, income growth of 20.8% “was outpaced by 32 other states,” he noted online.

“I think Colorado’s fall in ranking between 2019 and 2023 could be a reflection of other states increasing their minimum wages and having tighter labor markets than Colorado post-pandemic,” Gedney said in an email. “While Colorado’s minimum wage continued to increase through 2023 (and onward due to indexing), that gain was only 23% between 2019 and 2023. Additionally, Colorado’s openings-to-unemployed ratio bounced around significantly in 2022 and 2023, with rankings as low as sixth but as high as 36th. That said, I don’t see Colorado’s relatively low rank between 2019-2023 as discouraging.”

Other highlights from the state’s OEWS report:

• The Boulder metro area had the highest annual average and median wages in the state, at $87,221 and $64,753, respectively. Eastern and southern Colorado areas had the lowest average wage at $54,205 and median wage of $45,220.
• The majority of the state’s labor force is in the Denver metro area, at 56.7%, or nearly 1.6 million workers. The Colorado Springs metro is second with 11.1%, or 310,390 workers.
• Colorado has 10 times more astronomers than the rest of the nation, thanks to the federal labs and universities located in the state.  

We’ve graphed the data to give you a visual on the top-paying and lowest-paying occupations in Colorado:

Who’s eligible for paid FAMLI leave?

There are roughly 3.2 million people in Colorado’s labor force. Of those, 3.2 million are eligible for the state’s new paid family leave program. So, pretty much everyone who works in Colorado is eligible.

So, why is demand lower than projected? Tracy Marshall, division director for the state’s Family and Medical Leave Insurance program, says that folks are still learning about it and don’t realize they’re eligible.

To make sure workers learn about it, her agency continues to publicize the perk. They hosted a webinar Tuesday, which can be viewed here. Future events are posted on the FAMLI website. And she’s hoping that word spreads, so if you’re reading this and know someone who needs time off to care for a new child or serious health issue, send them to the FAMLI portal at famli.colorado.gov.

“For the remainder of this year, we will be identifying more target approaches with a focus on rural Colorado, low wage earners and small business. Continuing our partnerships with business groups will help us reach those who are still learning about FAMLI,” Marshall said.

There are some eligibility rules. Most workers can take leave if they’ve earned at least $2,500 in wages subject to FAMLI premiums over a period of about a year. You also have to apply for benefits (start here).

About 3,500 applications have been denied for “a variety of reasons,” Marshall said. Those include failure to verify one’s identity or meet the wage requirements. Also, workers who are already covered by a private plan (those must be approved by the state) are ineligible. Workers also need to get their serious health condition certified by a licensed health provider.

➔ ICYMI: Demand for Colorado’s paid-family and medical leave 44% less than expected

Got some economic news or business bits Coloradans should know? Tell us: cosun.co/heyww

Sun economy stories you may have missed

➔ FTC chair, Colorado AG pledge to crack down on “abusive and predatory practices” of corporate landlords. The tenant roundtable focused on hidden fees, habitability and rent-setting algorithms accused of driving up the cost of housing >> Read story

➔ Meet Colorado’s hardest-working investigator trained to sniff out suspicious fires. Ash, the 16-month Labrador retriever, is trained to help firefighters pinpoint the cause of fires around the state. >> Read story

➔ Stalled by massive theft, Argo Mill gondola gets going again. “Don’t ever count Mary Jane out,” Idaho Springs mayor says. >> Read story

➔ Two Coloradans join first-ever commercial spacewalk to research ways for people to live on Mars. The four-person crew of Polaris Dawn plans to conduct nearly 40 science experiments that could help regular people with regular health problems live on the moon or Mars. >> Read story

➔ Two Colorado agencies are fighting over information. Now, one is charging the other a $30-per-hour research fee. The dispute between the state child welfare division and the child protection ombudsman centers around documents about caseworkers who falsify records. >> Read story

➔ Boulder’s Outdoor Industry Association ends 30-year partnership with Outdoor Retailer trade show. It’s unclear how once-crucial trade shows will fit in the maturing outdoor industry as businesses move away from national buying and selling gatherings. >> Read story

Other working bits

➔ Denver janitors vote to strike. Their contract ends Sunday and if a new one isn’t reached, 2,400 Denver-area janitors may walk out the door as union members authorized a strike this week, said union reps at Service Employees International Union Local 105. That would impact the cleaning at more than 1,500 buildings in Denver, Boulder, Golden, Cherry Creek and the Denver Tech Center. The majority of janitors work for CCS Commercial Cleaning Services and ABM Industries, which did not respond to requests for comment.

“The major issues the janitors want to address include equitable and livable wages that match the rising costs of living in all areas of the Denver Metro. They also want to address workload issues, as many janitors have seen personnel cut in half since the pandemic, while the number of floors and job duties have sometimes doubled,” SEIU’s David Fernandez said in an email.

➔ Kroger/Albertsons merger on pause in Colorado. The pending union of two of the nation’s largest grocery chains hit another snag Thursday after a Colorado judge ordered a temporary block to the proposed $25 billion merger. The order was in response to a lawsuit opposing the deal filed by the Colorado Attorney General’s office that said the union would violate the state’s antitrust laws. The Federal Trade Commission filed a similar lawsuit. Kroger owns King Soopers and City Markets in Colorado.

“This is great news for shoppers, workers, farmers, and other suppliers, who can rest assured that this mega-merger will not go into effect during harvest season and while kids are headed back to school,” AG Phil Weiser said in a statement, adding that the trial is scheduled to start Sept. 30. >> Earlier story

➔ Colorado’s AI job growth lags other tech-centric states. A new report from the Colorado Chamber of Commerce and Aspen Technology Labs found that job openings for artificial-intelligence workers grew a mere 3.3% compared with a year ago. Nationwide, growth was 19.5%. But in California — home to leading generative-AI companies like OpenAI, Google and Meta — the growth in AI job openings was 83.7%. Did Colorado’s new AI law to put guardrails on policies have something to do with that? A Chamber spokeswoman said it was too early to link the two since the law — which had enough opposition from the tech industry after it passed that Gov. Jared Polis announced plans to revise it — won’t take effect until 2026. >> View report

➔ Up to $100,000 in grants for apprenticeship programs in construction. The state’s official Apprenticeship Colorado program has made its BuildUp Grants: Round 2 available to applicants in the construction and building industry. Grants of up to $100,000 can be used to offset costs of training apprentices, support services and outreach. The deadline is before midnight Aug. 29. A virtual informational session is scheduled for July 30 at 11 a.m. (register for webinar). >> Details, Apply

Thanks for sticking with me for this week’s report. Remember to check out The Sun’s daily coverage online. As always, share your 2 cents on how the economy is keeping you down or helping you up at cosun.co/heyww. ~ tamara

Miss a column? Catch up: 

• Repurposing old stuff in Colorado can be profitable
• Despite setbacks, a Durango builder is framing affordable houses in under a month
• What consumers and businesses need to know about Colorado’s “Do not sell my data” law
• Colorado employers may finally have found enough workers
• How a Denver company is fighting the problem of underemployment
• Why Colorado could start attracting more filmmakers
• New broadband laws to help Colorado streamline distribution of $800+ million
• Nearly 55,000 Coloradans now have a retirement account after law went into effect

What’s Working is a Colorado Sun column about surviving in today’s economy. Email tamara@coloradosun.com with stories, tips or questions. Read the archive, ask a question at cosun.co/heyww and don’t miss the next one by signing up at coloradosun.com/getww.

Support this free newsletter and become a Colorado Sun member: coloradosun.com/join

The Colorado Sun is part of The Trust Project. Read our policies.

Corrections & Clarifications

Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.

The work perk of getting paid while taking time off to care for one’s health or that of a family member hasn’t been as popular as expected, according to the data from the first six months of Colorado’s new paid-leave program.

Colorado’s Family and Medical Leave Insurance program, which is managed by the state but funded by workers and employers, paid out more than $311 million in benefits in the first half of the year, according to state Department of Labor and Employment data. That’s 44% less than the $552.7 million anticipated in a 2022 analysis done for the state, said Tracy Marshall, division director for FAMLI.

“Demand is proving to be lower than projected as Coloradans continue to learn about the program. We’re taking this into consideration, as we continue our outreach and education efforts to ensure workers know they now have access to this new benefit,” Marshall said in an email.

FAMLI is a social insurance program offering some income to workers on unpaid federal leave. Workers can tap the benefit to bond with a new child, care for themselves or a family member’s serious health condition, arrange for a family member’s military deployment or address safety issues stemming from domestic violence or sexual assaults. 

Though voters approved the program as part of a 2020 ballot initiative, it’s still not well known, said Hunter Nelson, Colorado director of Small Business Majority, a progressive organization supporting small businesses. 

“Based on our conversations with small business owners in Colorado, it is a mixed bag regarding awareness of FAMLI. Some small business owners are making this clear as an option to their employees but many also haven’t even heard of FAMLI,” Hunter said. “We feel there is a significant gap in terms of outreach and education of FAMLI to small business owners and their employees who may be eligible for these benefits.”

All employers in Colorado must register, including businesses with just one employee. Workers pay 0.45% of their salary into the FAMLI fund, and companies match it. But businesses with fewer than 10 employees aren’t required to contribute the company portion — a carveout Small Business Majority advocated for, Hunter said. Companies with private plans must get state approval before opting out. 

As of July 1, the FAMLI fund had $1.1 billion, according to state officials. That includes worker and employer contributions for the first quarter, but not the second quarter, which are still rolling in. The current fund also doesn’t include the $311 million, since those have already been paid. 

“Our fund is strong and at no risk of running out of money,” Marshall said.

Who opted out of FAMLI

There are 1,321 local governments that voted to opt out of the plan, which is about an 86% decline rate. Many in this group — which includes any city, town, school or special district — said they already had a plan or the cost of FAMLI was too high.

Another 5,155 employers are on one of the 20 private plans approved by the state. That’s about 2.4% of employers.

Employees of local governments that opted out and the self-employed can still participate in FAMLI by paying the premiums. Federal workers aren’t eligible.

The loss of local governments and companies with private plans could “pose some risk to the solvency of the program,” according to the Segal Group, which analyzed the cost and solvency of FAMLI in 2022. Segal Group anticipated that the fund would remain solvent even if 75% for local governments and 25% for private employers opted out. 

However, the report noted that even with 100% of local governments opting out, the program would remain solvent through fiscal year 2032.  And at a rate of 2.4% on private plans, that means the vast majority of private employers are participating.

It’s the private employers that could be worrisome. 

“Right now, we have no concerns about how local government participation or employers using private plans will impact future solvency. The first six months of the program are showing a surplus in funds,” Marshall said.

The stats of FAMLI

As it is, there are now 219,222 private employers registered with FAMLI and roughly 3.2 million workers who are eligible.

As of July 1, 62,632 claims were approved. Approximately 3,488 were denied, while about 13,100 were incomplete or canceled by the worker. Of those approved for leave, 70% have already returned to work.

The benefit provides a weekly paycheck that is up to 90% of a worker’s earnings for up to 12 weeks, or 16 weeks if there are childbirth complications. Benefits are capped at $1,100 per week, so higher earners will see a smaller paycheck, which workers can choose to top off using their vacation and sick days, if available. 

When the employee wants to take paid leave, they must file a claim with the state agency, which manages the process and pays the benefit. The employer isn’t responsible for paying employees during their leave but must pay health insurance premiums that are normally covered. Workers on leave must arrange to pay their share of health insurance in order to keep it. 

In the first half of the year, the average leave was 53.3 days and the average weekly payment was $915.30, according to state data. 

As seen in the chart below, there were more workers requesting medical leave to care for themselves than the traditional reason for parental leave of taking care of a new child. 

“Based on what we’re seeing in the first six months of the program, we’re focusing now on making sure Colorado workers know they have access to this new benefit — something many workers may not have typically had access to previously,” Marshall said, sharing additional tools and resources that could help workers through the application process.

Tamara Chuang

Business/Technology Reporter

Quick links: Finding profit | Where does Colorado recycling go | Nicotine pouch maker picks Aurora | LogRhythm layoffs| Colorado unemployment rate stays at 3.8%

Reduce, reuse and recycle are the three R’s in the world of sustainability. Damon Carson has a fourth one: Repurpose. That’s not the same as reuse, he says.

“A typical reuse is if you own a boat and decide you don’t want it anymore, you put it on Craigslist or Facebook marketplace and somebody buys it. There’s a 99% chance they’re going to use it as a boat,” said Carson, founder of Westminster-based RepurposedMaterials. “Repurposing is reuse but life No. 2 is very different from No. 1.”

Carson takes a different approach toward sustainability compared to recyclers in Colorado, which process waste plastic, tires, mattresses and other materials into something new. 

He, instead, has assembled a playground of items filled with potential new purposes at a warehouse in Lafayette. Yards of old fire hoses. Tons of steel grates. Multitudes of whisky barrels, carpet samples, and even remnants of the old RTD bus station at Civic Center in Denver, according to an employee. 

In the past, one bride repurposed white military cargo parachutes into a canopy for her outdoor wedding. Another customer used wood planks reclaimed from an old bowling alley and turned them into kitchen countertops. Spent vinyl billboard signs became unique dresses for a “Trashion” fashion show.

There are all sorts of random and large items to inspire local DIYers, plus signs with pictures for inspiration, and customers have gifted the company some of their projects, including an old ski lift chair with a seat made of repurposed rope.

“We call ourselves an industrial thrift store,” Carson said. “There’s lots of stuff that should go to the landfill and that seems like the only option. (But) there is an amazing amount of stuff in America from industry that still has value if you apply some effort into thinking about an alternate second life for it.”

There’s profit in repurposing

Carson’s been promoting the notion of repurposing old industrial objects for more than a decade. His company shares clever updates made by fans with fans via a newsletter. But it’s not really his hobby. It’s his business. And he’s found that connecting unwanted industrial and commercial items from companies with buyers who find new uses for the stuff is profitable. It has to be, he said.

“The only way we keep the lights on, the only way we keep propane on in the forklifts and employees paid is if we buy something for $1, we have to sell it for $2,” he said. “But they are not going to donate steel I beams to us because they can sell it to a recycler for 10 cents a pound.”

It’s a for-profit business that has expanded to locations in six states and 25 employees nationwide. He’d passed the million-dollar revenue mark a decade ago though he won’t say what sales are today other than it’s “definitely above $1.6M in revenue now,” he said. And he’s proud that he’s survived in the sustainability world without taking any grants or public subsidies.

But just like the recycling industry, there can be challenges when it comes to giving life to old stuff.

Carson has had to hone his business and negotiating skills. For metal, he may offer 12 cents a pound if a scrap metal buyer offers 10 cents. He benefits if customers realize that it is cheaper to donate items to him than send it to a landfill, which charges dumping fees.

He has to be picky though. He’s not about to buy 100 covered wagons, he joked. But he did take a gamble a few years ago when someone asked if he could take enormous pieces of glass.

“So Apple, the famous Apple company, they were replacing some skylights. They were really big — 7-feet wide, 30-feet long, 14 of them, at one of their stores in Palo Alto, California,” he said. “They could have thrown it into the landfill but it’s Apple. There was consumer pressure and shareholder pressure, ‘Hey, you make billions of dollars. Be a good steward.’ So they reached out to us through a middleman.”

Apple donated the glass and paid to transport it to RepurposedMaterials’ Arizona facility, he said. (Apple did not respond to a request to confirm the donation.)

“Then the game’s on for us,” he said. “If I can’t rehome those and can’t find someone to repurpose them, we’re going to send them to the landfill and it’s going to cost us money. We’re going to lose $2,000 or $3,000. Fortunately in that case, we were able to rehome (everything). And we did make a profit that allows us to live another day.”

Where does recycling in Colorado go?

In case you missed it, earlier this week I reported on four companies processing recycling in the state. They don’t just collect recycled waste, but they buy it and turn it into something new — and make a profit. They’ve joined a statewide effort called Circular Colorado to figure out a better plan to make sure consumer, business and industrial recycling doesn’t end up in landfills. The highlights:

• Old tires: Denver-based Pretred processes old tires into road barriers. Each 1,700-pound, 6-foot-wide barrier contains 70 old tires. >> More
• Most plastics: Direct Polymers rebooted the economics of recycling plastic to make a profit. Some of the secret is just transportation efficiency. The Denver recycler is also working on recycled-plastic railroad ties, which offers higher margins. >> More
• Thin plastic: Pueblo-based Driven Plastics turns flimsy plastic bags into a road pavement additive that’s already part of some roads in Pueblo. >> More

➔ READ: Recycling can feel pointless. Here are Colorado companies changing that.

But I didn’t mention everything since the focus was processes doing the work in Colorado. Seattle.-based Ridwell offers recycling pickup service for Denver residents and partners with multiple recyclers nationwide to process unwanted items into something new. Circular Colorado is also adding new partners though the goal for this organization is to help Colorado process recycling locally so items needn’t be transported out of state. That’s a work in progress, but here are other efforts worth mentioning:

Flimsy plastic bags: Besides Driven Plastics — which has a bin outside its Pueblo facility and just partnered with Pueblo’s RecycleWorks at 1595 Stockyard Road to accept bags — there’s also Trex, which makes composite decking and accepts plastic bags. Find NexTrex recycling bins at King Soopers and other stores.

Shingles: Malvern, Pennsylvania-based CertainTeed, which is part of building-materials giant Saint-Gobain, recycles shingle waste into asphalt paving mix. It joined Circular Colorado’s effort to create a network in the state in September.

Paper and packaging: Colorado’s Producer Responsibility Program for Statewide Recycling Act (House Bill 1355), which passed in 2022, put the financial responsibility of recycling paper and packaging on the producers. In essence, they pay to make sure the packaging use gets recycled. Still underway, the program is run by the nonprofit Circular Action Alliance. By Jan. 1, producers start paying dues if they’re using paper or other covered materials.

➔ MORE: How to recycle old mattresses, couches, furniture, appliances, construction materials, vinyl banners, computers and electronics, baby and kids gear, paint and everything else that’s hard to recycle. >> Story

➔ Get rid of old paint this weekend. Paint recycler GreenSheen is hosting an event Saturday with the Arapahoe High School baseball team. The four-hour event starts at 10 a.m. at 2201 E. Dry Creek Road, in Centennial. The Denver-based GreenSheen processes old latex paint into a premium latex paint that is sold in 18 colors at vendors nationwide. There’s also no charge, thanks to Colorado’s paint stewardship law, which charges a fee at time of purchase. If you can’t get to the event, GreenSheen accepts paint at its Jason Street facility and has a bunch of other local collection events scheduled. >> Event details

Sun economy stories you may have missed

➔ Colorado is steering affordable housing money to the middle class — and away from the working poor. Using affordable housing dollars once reserved exclusively for low-income residents, the state has begun subsidizing rental units for middle-income families who make as much as $170,000 >> Read story

➔ Stegosaurus fossil from Colorado fetches nearly $45M, setting record for dinosaur auctions. The price blew past a pre-sale estimate of $4 million to $6 million and past a prior auction record for dinosaur fossils >> Read story

➔ Xcel Energy is unsure it can meet Colorado’s clean-energy goals at the cost it promised. The utility wants more time, but regulators and consumer advocates worry delays will only boost the $12 billion price tag even higher >> Read story

➔ Individual health insurance rates in Colorado could see below-average increase in 2025. Premiums on the individual market could rise 5.5% next year, while premiums for Colorado Option plans look set for a smaller increase >> Read story

➔ Should all Colorado substitute teachers be members of PERA? The question is headed to court >> Read story

➔ Colorado’s ham radio operators are ready for an emergency — just don’t call them amateurs. A passionate group of amateur radio operators maintain a durable network that can keep communication flowing in good times and bad >> Read story

Other working bits

➔ Smokeless ZYN nicotine manufacturer picks Aurora, plans to hire 500. That’s courtesy of tobacco company Philip Morris International. PMI affiliate company Swedish Match announced a $600 million investment in the city of Aurora, and it includes building a manufacturing plant and hiring 500 workers. The plant is expected to ramp up to regular production in 2026. By then, hiring will be well underway and have an average annual salary of $90,000.

While company officials didn’t answer what starting pay for entry-level jobs would be, PMI spokesman Matthew Sheaff said in an email, “Opportunities at the new facility will cover a wide range of skill levels including positions such as engineers, production staff, technicians and quality control.” The Zyn pouches, which don’t contain tobacco leaves, do contain nicotine, an addictive chemical.

➔ 80 jobs cut as Broomfield firm merges. The merger of Colorado’s homegrown cybersecurity firm LogRhythm with Exabeam in Foster City, California, was completed Thursday. The company will be known as Exabeam. With the merger, 80 employees at LogRhythm’s headquarters in Broomfield will lose their jobs, effective Sept. 14, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification letter to the state’s Department of Labor and Employment.

While the Broomfield location will remain open, Exabeam officials declined to comment on its Colorado operations. “It is our aim to be operationally efficient and retain as much talent as possible for the success of the company. We will not disclose specific details regarding headcount,” an Exabeam representative said in an email. On its website, LogRhythm said it has “over 500” employees globally. Chris O’Malley, who joined LogRhythm as its CEO two years ago, was named CEO of the combined company.

➔ Colorado jobless rate remains at 3.8%. While the state had 800 more workers who were unemployed last month, the June unemployment rate was unchanged from May due to rounding. The nation’s rate inched up again by one-tenth to 4.1%. In June, the state added 1,400 nonfarm payroll jobs. More than half were government jobs. The state’s May job data was also revised down to 6,400 instead of 9,800 as more responses from businesses came in. Construction saw the largest decline in jobs, by about 1,100. For the year, public and private employers added 40,900 jobs putting job growth at 1.4%, below the nation’s 1.7%, according to state labor data. >> Labor department update

➔ Federal contracts 101 for women-owned businesses in Colorado Springs. The Small Business Administration is co-sponsoring the ChallengeHER event Aug. 22 in Colorado Springs to encourage participation in its Women-Owned Small Business Federal Contract program. The free event includes training, mentoring and networking with government buyers and public agencies. >> Details

Got some economic news or business bits Coloradans should know? Tell us: cosun.co/heyww

Thanks for sticking with me for this week’s report. As always, share your 2 cents on how the economy is keeping you down or helping you up at cosun.co/heyww. ~ tamara

Miss a column? Catch up:

• What consumers and businesses need to know about Colorado’s “Do not sell my data” law
• Colorado employers may finally have found enough workers
• How a Denver company is fighting the problem of underemployment
• Why Colorado could start attracting more filmmakers
• New broadband laws to help Colorado streamline distribution of $800+ million
• Nearly 55,000 Coloradans now have a retirement account after law went into effect
• Growing older in Colorado? You’ll be interested in these new laws

What’s Working is a Colorado Sun column about surviving in today’s economy. Email tamara@coloradosun.com with stories, tips or questions. Read the archive, ask a question at cosun.co/heyww and don’t miss the next one by signing up at coloradosun.com/getww.

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