Colorado employers added more jobs in June than they have in any single month since official counts began back in 1939.
Non-farm payrolls rose by 33,600 from May to June, a monthly increase for the record books if it holds up, according to a monthly update Tuesday from the state Department of Labor and Employment.
On a percentage basis, the increase was the strongest in Colorado since June 2007, the summer before the last recession, but it wasn’t strong enough to prevent unemployment from rising.
“There are a lot of things that are moving in different directions, and it doesn’t make sense,” said Gary Horvath, a Broomfield economist who tracks state employment reports.
Colorado was among a dozen states where the unemployment rate rose in June from May, moving to 4.4 percent from 4.3 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis.
Part of the dissonance could be statistical. The payroll numbers are based on a more representative survey of about 7,000 employers, while a separate and much smaller survey of 600 to 700 households is used to determine the state’s unemployment rate, said Alexandra Hall, the state’s chief labor economist.
That household survey estimates there were 7,100 fewer Coloradans employed in June than in May, including 5,600 people who dropped out of the labor force entirely and an additional 1,500 people who were unemployed and actively looking for work.
January is the peak month for layoffs, and June the top month for hiring in Colorado, so last month’s surge wasn’t unexpected.
Adjusting for seasonality, non-farm payrolls in Colorado rose by 11,300 from May to June, the biggest increase since January 2014 and, before that, March 2007.
June’s hiring pace is more than double the 4,700-job monthly gains reported in May and April and in some ways represents a case of playing catch-up after a soft first quarter.
“Even with this larger increase, in the first half of 2015 we are growing slower than we were in the first half of 2014,” Hall said.
Non-farm payroll growth is averaging 5,500 jobs a month in the first half of 2015 versus 6,600 in the first half of 2014.
Leisure and hospitality firms were the most active when it came to hiring in June. They accounted for 36 percent of the jobs gained on a seasonally adjusted basis and nearly three out of four of all jobs in terms of the raw numbers.
The Art hotel, which hired 130 staffers in the weeks before it opened last month in Denver, was a contributor to the surge.
“It was a challenge getting staff in the traditional channels,” general manager David Bodette said.
Word-of-mouth and social media helped The Art achieve its hiring quota, but Bodette said he knows of four or five other hotels, not to mention several new restaurants, that are struggling to fill positions.
Local governments, up 2,500 workers from May to June, as well as trade, transportation and utilities, up by 2,400, were the other sectors with a strong showing.
The information sector, a perennial job shedder, dropped 300 jobs between May and June, and mining, once a strong performer, lost a similar number.
In one of the report’s other surprises, construction payrolls rose by only 100 positions on a seasonally adjusted basis, despite an acceleration in home and apartment building along the northern Front Range.
Builders have complained about a lack of skilled laborers that is so severe that completion times on new homes have doubled to eight months, according to Metrostudy.
Unemployment in metro Denver was 4.3 percent in June, up from 4.1 percent in May. In Boulder County, unemployment rose to 3.8 percent from 3.5 percent in May. Unemployment in Weld County, the hub of oil and gas production in the state, stood at 4.6 percent in June, up from 4.2 percent in May. County-level numbers aren’t seasonally adjusted.
Nationally, employers added 223,000 in June, and the U.S. unemployment rate fell to 5.3 percent from 5.5 percent. Part of the decline occurred because some job hunters gave up actively looking for work, a requirement for them to be counted in the official unemployment counts.
Colorado was among 12 states where the unemployment rate rose last month. It fell in 21 states and stayed level in 17.
At the same time, Colorado was one of only seven states with a statistically significant gain in payroll counts between May and June, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
