Unemployment at 2.5% reaches historic low for COS (Denver, Colorado Springs: for sale, new house)

[Vision67]

We have about 10K jobs available in Colorado Springs now

Colorado Springs unemployment rate reaches historic low - KOAA.com | Continuous News | Colorado Springs and Pueblo

I guess that helps to explain the increased traffic, zooming rents, and the dearth of houses available for sale.

I have mixed feelings about that. Although I think it's a good thing because it provides opportunity for our young people and it creates tax revenue to maintain the infrastructure, it also contributes to sprawl and traffic congestion.

What do you think?

[otowi]

To me the downsides of growth are often associated with the ways it is done -leaving something to decay to build something else new and shiny gobbling up open space that contributes to quality of life. And the fact that infrastructure has no way to keep up given our tax situation. I'm glad people have jobs - but I question the quality of some of those, and I'm very much with you about sprawl and traffic. Absolutely this is not the city I grew up in - some of that is still here, yes, but a lot has been swallowed. And that is a mixed bag.

[Vision67]

Originally Posted by otowi

To me the downsides of growth are often associated with the ways it is done -leaving something to decay to build something else new and shiny gobbling up open space that contributes to quality of life.

I think that's what happens when we so easily promote sprawl. If you look right now at the growth areas of the city, e.g. along north Voyager near Interquest, you'll see new everything. If you move into a new house out there, you get new streets, strip malls, parks, etc.

But if you look back at the city and focus on older neighborhoods, e.g. Academy and Platte area, you have vacant storefronts, pot holed roads, and dilapidated housing. Our sprawl model won't generate enough tax revenue to maintain the city. Furthermore, our voters will not agree to higher taxation.

My kids live in San Francisco. Houses there are so expensive that they get maintained and updated. Because there is very little vacant space available, their infrastructure is constantly maintained. The big downside is their gawd awful taxes. A generic 50 year old tract home is about $1M and its property taxes for a new buyer are about $12K per year!

Somewhere between those two extremes, we ought to be able to reach an acceptable tax rate that sufficiently maintains the city.

[DrDog]

Growth and low unemployment is certainly better than the opposite. The growth we see here is the same as anywhere else. San Francisco is an exception to the rule because there is no land for expansion.

[Vision67]

Colorado Springs area unemployment rate drops to 2.5 percent, lowest since at least 1990 | Colorado Springs Gazette, News

"Colorado Springs was tied for the 14th lowest unemployment rate with five other cities while Fort Collins, Boulder, Greeley and Denver led the list with jobless rates of 1.8 percent, 1.9 percent, 2 percent and 2.1 percent, respectively. Colorado had the nation's lowest jobless rate in both March and April at 2.6 percent and 2.3 percent, respectively.

"It doesn't get much better than this," Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers said. "Considering Colorado Springs has a lot of soldiers and their spouses coming and going, I would expect that a 2.5 percent unemployment rate is close to full employment. I am worried about a labor shortage. The construction industry is already experiencing a shortage and we have more than 1,000 openings for registered nurses locally and that is before Children's Hospital and the expansions of Memorial Hospital North and St. Francis Medical Center are open" in 2018 and 2019.

The number of openings listed by local employers with the Pikes Peak Workforce Center exceeded the number of people looking for work by nearly 4,400 with 1,100 openings for registered nurses and more than 700 each for customer service representatives and software engineers. The center reports average job posting takes more than a month to fill."



The boom continues. Need a job? Can you fog a mirror?

[Mike from back east]

Originally Posted by Vision67

.... Can you fog a mirror?

I've cracked a few in my time....