Well, I've said it before, Colorado is ahead of the curve in terms of economic recovery. Today's Business Journal echos this sentiment:
CSU, CU Economists: Colorado’s Recovery Could Start as Early as Summer
Excerpted from The Denver Business Journal - Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Colorado went through a bad economic year in 2008 and can expect more of the same this year, but there are signs that a recovery could start as soon as summer, a pair of Colorado’s top university business economists agreed Wednesday.
While calling 2008 “a horrific year,” Martin Shields, regional economist at Colorado State University, said that “things really weren’t so bad in Colorado” as they were across the nation.
Speaking at the South Metro Denver Chamber of Commerce’s annual Economic Forecast Breakfast at the Hyatt Regency DTC, Shields noted that Colorado was one a handful of states that actually created slightly more jobs than it lost last year, although the pace of job growth slowed.
He also said that Colorado’s housing market, although overbuilt, had “no real-estate bubble to pop” as compared with other states like California and Florida, so its economy has been hurt less by deflation in housing prices.
And while he predicted 2009 “will be a rough year” in the Centennial State, with the loss of an estimated 3,400 jobs, “we expect us to begin a recovery by mid-summer.”
Richard Wobbekind. associate dean in the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado at Boulder, who also addressed the breakfast, said he agreed with much of Shields’ assessment, although he added there is great uncertainty about when a recovery may begin.
“We’re talking about an economy that’s stuck in the mud,” Wobbekind said. “The best-case scenario is that we start to pull out of this by mid-summer,” with the third or fourth quarter of the year a more likely starting point, he said.
To read the full article, please click here: http://denver.bizjournals.com/denver/stories/2009/01/19/daily20.html?surround=etf
Keep up the good work, Colorado!
Jan