Real Unemployment Reaches 20% In 7 Colorado Counties

The Colorado Observer. ^ | September 28, 2012 | Tyler Sandberg

[george76]

The slowest economic recovery since World War II is going especially slow for sections of Colorado

...

Whereas the unemployment rate doesn’t include people who are out of work, but have given up looking for a job, the “Not Employed Rate” gives a fuller picture of the dire economic situation many Coloradans are currently facing.

Colorado has faced one of the slowest economic recoveries in the nation coming out of the recession.

[dalebert]

pray for our nation..It has to be more valuable than a cellphone

[tiki]

My son lives in Colorado, he has kept his job because his boss doesn’t want to lose him but I keep wondering when the boss will just give up trying to keep the business going.

[cripplecreek]

I suspect it’s up there in some of the rural northern Michigan counties as well. Gotta figure, in counties with 5000 or less people it doesn’t take a lot to jack up the unemployment rate. Counties like that also tend to have a lot of self employed who aren’t doing a lot these days.

[Road Glide]

“pray for our nation..It has to be more valuable than a cellphone”

The problem is that for many, the cellphone seems to have become the most important device in their lives.

All I see when I’m out and about are people looking at their cellphones (particularly younger females).

Doesn’t say a lot for our future.

Full disclosure:
I myself have a cellphone, but it’s ALWAYS turned off, and I generally don’t carry it on my person. It’s for taking along on a trip as an emergency contact device, or for when riding on the Harley (same reason, but still always off). The ONLY time it’s ever turned on is when I have to make an important call (a contact that is absolutely necessary). And that ain’t very often...

[albionin]

I live in Colorado and my old industry, home construction, is dead in our area. Rather than wait for things to get better I started an online business selling what used to be a side work item for me and it is growing nicely despite the slow economy. But now I see more economic bad news headed our way and I worry that our sales will slow down and then I don’t know what I’ll do. Probably head for Texas or South Dakota.

[cripplecreek]

I keep a cheap tracfone that I carry when I’m away but few people have the number anyway.

[bigbob]

Before wind industry layoffs..

[cripplecreek]

Before wind industry layoffs.

LOL Here in Michigan they're trying to tell us that the wind industry will create 95,000 jobs and they can't be made overseas (the blades and towers are currently coming from South Korea and Germany)

NO on proposal 3

[ROCKLOBSTER]

I myself have a cellphone, but it’s ALWAYS turned off, and I generally don’t carry it on my person. It’s for taking along on a trip as an emergency contact device

Ditto that. Like a walkie talkie.

Gee, if I were to actually turn mine off, I'd probably have to charge it less often.

[Mygirlsmom]

We're not in Colorado, but the remodeling firm my daughter worked for just went belly up. They were closing on $3mil in sales this year (only two years in business), but had a cash crunch for which they could not get any bridge financing.....in other words....jobs ready to be finished - probably $1mil outstanding, but no working capital -so they were on credit hold with their suppliers....no product - can't finish the jobs and collect the money for the project.

I feel awful for everyone involved....the customers whose jobs are half finished will think it's all due to "greed" or an unscrupulous scamster when in reality, the "financing for small businesses" is just not there.

How Obama is not in the 20's in terms of approval is beyond comprehension.

[FrdmLvr]

0bama’s voters do not care about unemployment numbers or the economy.

[MeneMeneTekelUpharsin]

Don’t worry. It’ll be 20% or more pretty much everywhere soon.

[Bon mots]

Let them eat ObamaPhones!

[NVDave]

Here’s the list of counties:

Costilla County: 23.56 percent.
Pueblo County: 20.09%
Montrose County 20.62%
Fremont County 19.66%
Huerfano County 21.78%
Archuleta County 19.97%
Dolores County 19.85%

As another poster remarked, the rural counties are hit hard. Pueblo, however, was largely a economic shambles once the unions got done hazing out the steel mill owners. Once CF&I went under, that was the backbone of Pueblo’s economy broken and gone - and many of the economies of the surrounding counties. Coal mines, lime mining, iron mines, etc - all fed into CF&I. There were even mines in Wyoming that fed coal down to CF&I.

Now the ChiComs own some of the met coal mines in southern CO, and they’ve just shut down at least one coal mine. The steel plant in Pueblo is owned by a Russian company (”Evraz,” if memory serves) and it employs only a fraction of the men it used to.

[tiki]

I have well-established credit and have had no real problem getting financed but I have seen so many being denied, my other son is one of them. They didn’t actually say no but they kept putting him off and asking for more financial information and dancing around.

What was crazy is that they gave him a loan to buy a farm but never would give him the operating loan and what good is a farm if you aren’t farming it and how can you pay back the loan? We have just paid all his bills and the last time he said he was going to the bank I told him to forget it!