Business/Technology Reporter
Quick links: Business starts down, dissolutions up | 1.1 jobs per job seeker | State added 300 jobs | Reader poll results | More King Soopers strike votes | 55 days to sell a house | Denver rents falling
Two years after debuting a complaint form allowing anyone to report business-identity theft, the Colorado Secretary of State’s office has, as of this week, received 3,508 complaints about business records. More than half are under investigation while another 44% have been resolved and labeled “unauthorized or fraudulent.”
Such as this one.
Not too long ago, the department could not do a thing if it found out someone had hijacked another company’s name or address. As long as the business record was up to date and fees were paid, the record would get a “Good Standing” label. Thanks to Senate Bill 34, which passed in 2022, the secretary of state can send complaints to the attorney general to investigate and flag offenders in the system to prevent further abuse.
“We had estimated when the law was passed that it would be used a lot less than we’re seeing,” said Secretary of State Jena Griswold, during a news conference Monday. “But it’s showing two things: No. 1, there’s been an uptick in fraudulent business takeovers since the pandemic. And No. 2, the system that we set up and put into law really is working.”
Her office is responsible for the state’s business directory, the legal records of companies incorporated in Colorado. But the “Good Standing” label seemed misleading. It never meant the business was legitimate. As disclaimers on the secretary of state’s site say, “this office does not review or verify information submitted in those filings” nor “regulate or investigate business practices or operations.”
That made it tricky for consumers and professionals trying to suss out whether an unfamiliar company was credible. Opportunists and scammers have abused the system by incorporating shell companies that sell counterfeit products or prey on victims for financial gain or who knows what.
One out-of-state applicant filed more than 15,500 new business formations in 2022 and 2023 using someone else’s address in Northglenn. Defendant Marcio Garcia Andrade settled with the AG’s office last fall for violating the Colorado Consumer Protection Act. Andrade’s lawyer told The Colorado Sun that his registered agent had moved out of the house without telling him.
As part of the law, victims can file a complaint if their name or address is being used by another registered business or if their business information was changed without consent.
Registered business agents are prohibited from using a P.O. Box as their address. Businesses that are dissolved or late in their paperwork also can’t easily refile after a certain number of years unless they show proof of ID and an affidavit.
Another rule that goes into effect in July requires registered agents to have a Colorado driver’s license or state identification card.
Griswold said her office is asking the Joint Budget Committee this session for a full-time staffer plus $55,000 “to make sure we can keep up with demand.”
The additional funding would come from within — from business filing fees, said Jack Todd, a spokesman for the Secretary of State. The department is self-sustaining. In the last fiscal year, it raised $29.5 million in revenues and this fiscal year, it’s on track to raise $41.1 million, he said. But it can’t just move money willy-nilly. It needs permission.
“At the end of the day, being an attorney myself, it’s safe to say we don’t want small business owners to have to hire attorneys and go through potentially years of litigation to retake their name, their address or their business,” Griswold said. “This is a way to cut red tape and the cost for business owners and Coloradans.”
➔ Suspect business ID theft? File a complaint
Business starts down, dissolutions up
New business filings continued to decline, falling 13% in the fourth quarter, from a year earlier, according to the state department’s latest business update. That was blamed on the end of a filing fee discount to $1 in mid-2023. Fees are back to $50 to incorporate in Colorado.
In the opposite direction, the number of companies dissolving spiked 53% in the fourth quarter to more than 22,000. Before the fee reduction, dissolutions hovered below 12,000 a quarter. Todd pointed to the Andrade case. “The 15,500 entities from Northglenn were judicially dissolved within Q4 2024 also,” Todd said in an email.
Down to 1.1 open jobs per unemployed Coloradan
Employers are feeling much better about finding employees since 2022, the era of rampant labor shortages. According to a Colorado Chamber of Commerce survey of 169 employers, only 29% plan to increase their workforce this year, compared with 58% in 2022.
That may not be great news for workers hoping to easily switch gigs. The same trend appears in November’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary. Colorado was called out for having the nation’s largest decline in job openings, reducing available jobs per unemployed worker to 1.1. That compares with a ratio of less than one job for every two workers at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and nearly three per person during the 2022 labor shortage heyday.
But Colorado’s drop in job openings — down 92,000 (second place Maine lost 7,000) — seems suspiciously large. Is it a typo? Economist Rick Penn with the JOLTS team at the Bureau of Labor Statistics said monthly data is just volatile.
“JOLTS cannot speculate on why data increases or decreases, but the movement is largely due to data received through our survey respondents,” Penn said in an email that included a reminder that November data is preliminary.
A separate study by Aspen Tech Labs for the Colorado Chamber didn’t see such a stark drop in job openings for the state. Instead, the number of job listings fell 3,657, or 3%, to 120,000 between Sept. 30 and Dec 16.
The most in-demand worker? Retail associates.
Colorado employers added 300 jobs in December
On average last year, employers added 4,500 new jobs a month. But end-of-the-year numbers were coming in much lower. November lost more jobs than previously announced with revisions showing a loss of 5,200 jobs instead of a decrease of 3,900.
In December, employers added 300 jobs, mainly from the government adding 1,100, which offset private employers’ loss of 800. The leisure and hospitality and the financial activities sectors lost more than 1,200 jobs each, according to the state Department of Labor and Employment’s December report.
Economist Brian Lewandowski at the University of Colorado took heart in what areas added jobs: professional and business services and manufacturing, which added 1,300 and 1,100 jobs, respectively.
“Job growth was noted in professional business services and that’s always one that we’re watching. But we’re also seeing growth in manufacturing,” said Lewandowski, executive director of the Business Research Division at the CU business school. “Hopefully, that’s the start of a new trend where we start to see some stronger growth in our goods-producing services sector.”
As mentioned in an earlier story, Lewandowski said he’s concerned about the state’s rising unemployment rate — up one-tenth of a point to 4.4% in December. And it’s unclear why there’s job growth but also higher unemployment. It could be data inconsistencies or people working multiple jobs. “We do see them occasionally travel in different directions,” he said.
➔ ICYMI: Colorado’s unemployment rate rises to 4.4%, the highest in three years. >> Read
➔ Ups and downs in regional unemployment rates. The state’s unadjusted unemployment rate was 4.5% (adjusted, it was 4.3%). That’s the best way to see how the state’s major metro areas compared, as seen in this chart:
Sun economy stories you may have missed
➔ 107 oil and gas wells owned by a company based in a Highlands Ranch home are about to land on Colorado’s orphan list. The wells, most of which are on federal land, are not producing and have been passed from company to company, racking up environmental violations. >> Read story
➔ Colorado has spent $389M to fund its far-reaching water plans in the past two years. In an update to the Colorado Water Conservation Board, officials said they are on track to hit the 2033 completion date. >> Read story
➔ More riders, trains running on time: RTD sets new goals as public trust wanes. The agency responsible for Denver’s bus and rail lines has been trying to find its footing for the past five years, while ridership crawls out of a pandemic hole and public perception crumbles. >> Read story
➔ Colorado health insurance enrollment hits a record, as a threat to federal subsidies looms. Enrollment through Connect for Health Colorado reached its highest-ever level, but federal enhanced premium subsidies that helped make that possible are set to expire at the end of the year. >> Read story
➔ Replacing mining with nuclear waste? Northwestern Colorado has mixed feelings about how to save the economy. As northwestern Colorado loses coal jobs, a group is raising the possibility of nuclear waste storage as a replacement. People around Hayden aren’t sure this is the “just transition” they want. >> Read story
➔ FACT BRIEF: Are employers in Colorado required to pay workers for unused vacation time? Roughly 46% of workers in the U.S. do not use up their available paid time off >> Read story
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Reader poll results: Our towns
Every place has its pros and cons. Here’s how What’s Working readers weighed in on their own neighborhoods in the latest reader poll.
➔ How’s the economy treating you? Share some feedback to help us report. >> Take the next poll
Other working bits
➔ Will King Soopers workers strike again? Workers at Front Range King Soopers stores are in the process of voting whether to strike over unfair labor practices. So far, more than 95% of Denver-area workers voted in favor of a walkout. Colorado Springs employees also voted more than 95% in favor on Friday. Another day of voting will be Saturday in Pueblo. (Update on Feb. 3, 2025: Pueblo grocery workers also voted in favor of a strike, according to Local 7.)
Don’t expect a strike this weekend though. The vote only authorizes the union to call for a strike, as it did in early 2022 when Denver-area workers walked out for nine days. Before the first vote was held, King Soopers told the union that its “last, best and final offer” would increase the average hourly wage to $29.48.
Local 7 officials have called the offer “unacceptable” because increases are not across the board, especially across the state. Kim Cordova, Local 7’s president, said because more contracts have expired around the state compared with 2022, there could be thousands more on strike this time around. The union represents 12,000 King Soopers and City Market workers in Colorado. >> Keep track: Local 7, King Soopers
➔ Union membership barely grew in the U.S. in 2024. Counting 14.3 million employees nationwide, union membership made up 9.9% of the U.S. workforce and was little changed from a year earlier, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics update. Public sector workers had a much higher rate of union membership, at 32.2%, compared with private sector workers at 5.9%, a drop of 0.1 from the prior year.
➔ Colorado houses took 55 days to sell for 98.7% of the list price. And that brought the state’s median sales price in 2024 to $549,000, up 3.6% in a year, according to the Colorado Association of Realtors’ Economic Summit this week. Economic forecasts for 2025 from the report include:
➔ Denver rents still falling in January. Last week, we learned rents fell in the Denver metro area last year, according to the local apartment association. This week, ApartmentList said rents continued to decline in January. Rents fell 1.1% in January from December to a median of $1,643 per month. They’re down 5.4% from a year ago, a drop that’s larger than Colorado’s, down 4.1%, and the U.S., down 0.5%. Denver ranked third-slowest for rent growth. A one-bedroom unit is now going for $1,453 while a two bedroom is $1,810. Apartment vacancy rate was 8.9%, with more available than last year. The chart below shares rents by city:
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Thanks for sticking with me for this week’s report. As always, share your 2 cents on how the economy is keeping you down or helping you up at cosun.co/heyww. ~ tamara
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