How does the Denver economy stack up against other states in the country? It is a question that I recently encountered during a trip to Europe. I know, it is a funny question to come up on a European vacation, so let me explain. On the trip, I met a lot of other Americans, Canadians and obviously, Europeans. After talking for awhile, it always came up that I was a Realtor in Denver and the different responses I received to that were quite surprising.
About half the people I met and talked to about this, their initial response was, "Denver? I heard your market got hit pretty bad in the past few years."The rest of the peopledidn't know how our city had weathered the so called "great recession" and the others, mostly European, had only heard of Aspen when I told them Denver was in Colorado.Living here, and being so involved in the Real Estate market, I was able to explain to them that in fact, we have weathered the storm pretty well and our Real Estate market is doing great. But when they asked about the economy of Denver as a whole, I wasn't quite so confident with my response.
So on getting home, I started investigating further and found this report that just came out. In thesixth edition of Toward a More Competitive Colorado, the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation (Metro Denver EDC) released its annual benchmarking of Colorado's strengths, challenges, and opportunities for future job growth.
First published in 2005, Toward a More Competitive Colorado is the foremost effort to compare Colorado's competitive position against the other 49 states. Below are the highlights from the report. Based on these, it appears that Denver is doing very well in terms lifestyle, creating and bringing in new jobs, but very poorly in terms of education. The strong economic indicators most likely are a real reason the Denver Real Estate Market has been outperforming much of the country the past few years. But without a change to education, it could be difficult to continue in the future. While it certainly isn't the best news, everyone wants their city to be tops in all categories, it is certainly helpful to understand where our city and state stands and what we as residents need to focus our efforts on to improve our state further.
Highlights from the sixth edition report:
Strengths:
- Second in the country for economic outlook
- Second for adults with a bachelor's degree
- Fourth-highest population growth
- Nation's lowest obesity rate and No. 2 for fewest retail prescription drug refills
Colorado ranks highly in key innovation measures: - No. 2 for Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants
- No. 3 for venture capital investments
- No. 3 for high-tech employment
- No. 10 for patents granted
Colorado's cleantech economy is advancing: - Sixth in clean energy employment; ninth in clean energy job growth
- Seventh in wind energy generation; sixth in solar operations
Challenges:
- No. 44 for federal highway funding per capita (2006-2009)
- Transportation funding represented just 5.3 percent of the state's budget in 2010 (12.7 percent 30 years ago)
Colorado struggles in key K-12 and higher education indicators: - Third-lowest in Pre-K resources
- Ranked 22nd lowest for K-12 expenditures
- No. 26 in public school eighth grade students proficient in reading
- Tenth-highest in student/teacher ratio
- Ranks 32nd for high school graduates entering in-state colleges and universities
- Places near the bottom of the 50 states in higher education support, ranking 48th in both public support per full-time student and public support per capita
- Fourth-lowest in the country for export dollars per capita
Socials