Colorado 2020 Midyear Economic Update
In February 2020, the U.S. officially entered a recession according to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). This ended a record expansion that began in 2009 and spanned 10 years and 8 months. National real GDP declined at an annualized rate of 5% in the first quarter and 32.9% in the second quarter of 2020 according to estimates from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).
Heading into 2020, the Colorado Business Economic Outlook estimating committee projected job growth of 40,100 jobs, indicating that employment growth in the state would be the slowest since emerging from the recession in 2011. At a meeting held in late June, the chairs of the 14 Colorado Business Economic Outlook Forum committees collectively reported the destructive impact stemming from the pandemic. The revised outlook for Colorado employment growth in 2020 is -128,500 jobs (-4.6%), with losses spanning every major industry in the state.