There are more than 200 job openings at UCHealth hospitals and facilities in the Pikes Peak region, according to a quick search on job board Indeed. That’s not unusual to hundreds of openings since UCHealth, one of the largest nonmilitary employers in the region, has more than 7,000 employees in the Colorado Springs area — and that doesn’t include Pueblo, said Cary Vogrin, spokesperson for UCHealth in Colorado Springs. But that said, it has fewer job openings than a year ago. “In fact, there are 52% fewer jobs open in this region in May 2024 than in May 2023,” Vogrin said in an email. “This is specific to our hospitals in Teller and El Paso counties, and we attribute the lower number to turnover stabilization and opportunities for upward career mobility through UCHealth’s Ascend Career Program , in which employees can continue their education free of charge for certain clinical programs.” Retaining workers by giving them reasons to stick around may be a reason why the region is seeing some job-growth sluggishness. About 100 jobs were added to the El Paso and Teller counties payrolls in March, which is below the pre-pandemic monthly average of 588 in 2018 to 2019 and well below 900 average per month last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and an analysis by the University of Colorado Colorado Springs Economic Forum. January and February were worse with monthly declines of 400 and 500 jobs, respectively. Meanwhile, the area’s unemployment rate was up nearly a full percentage point in March, at 4% compared with a year earlier at 3.1%. Colorado Springs has a lot going for it, with multiple announcements of corporate expansions and new jobs so far this year. But economic development is just one part of the local economy. The delayed pain of higher interest rates may be impacting the region more so than the rest of the state or nation, theorized Bill Craighead, executive director of UCCS Economic Forum. “With our high growth and population turnover, construction and real estate are more important for the local economy and nationwide, so I think we’re more interest-sensitive than many other places,” Craighead said. It’s a popular city for newcomers, largely because of the military operations that have people coming and going. About 5.9% of the city’s population is in the armed forces. That’s led to stats that show Colorado Springs has nearly twice the rate of newcomers moving from out-of-state compared with Denver. According to the U.S. Census, 6.6% of the metro Colorado Springs population lived in another state a year ago, compared with 3.5% in metro Denver. Craighead has also been looking at local sales tax collections and noticed they’ve been sluggish, partly driven by lower sales in furniture, appliances and electronics category, or “things that people buy when they’re moving into a new house,” he said. “Our local economy is going to be more sensitive to interest rates than a lot of other places because we have so much real estate activity,” he said. “It’s not just growth, but you have really high population turnover. If you look at the share of real estate agents in our local labor force, it’s three times the national rate .” Still, even a 4% unemployment rate is still considered low. And being down several hundred jobs in one month pales in comparison to how many people are employed in Colorado Springs. That came in at around 365,147 in March, which is about 2,400 more than a year ago, according to BLS data. “The unemployment rate is minuscule and is an advantage for our region,” Johnna Reeder Kleymeyer, president and CEO of Colorado Springs Chamber and EDC, said in an email. “It shows that we have available talent to fill new and existing jobs. Companies are less likely to locate to a region with full employment.”
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