What’s Working: Colorado’s talent pipeline report identifies 163 “top jobs”

Tamara Chuang

Business/Technology Reporter

Quick links: The top Top Jobs | More top jobs | Impact of top jobs report | Edgewater takes on the tipped wage | Denver inflation slows |Take the poll

The annual top jobs in Colorado report was released this week. No single occupation took the No. 1 spot. Rather, 163 professions shared the honors.

That’s how the legislature-mandated Colorado Talent Pipeline Report works, said economist Ryan Gedney, who analyzed job forecasts, wages and other trends to figure out which of the 850 occupations would essentially provide Coloradans a decent living for years to come.

“All it really is doing is saying here are the jobs we’re highlighting that have high demand,” said Gedney, who works for the state Department of Higher Education and was previously at the labor department. “If it was advantageous for us to rank these things from one to 163, we probably would.”

The types of jobs are interestingly diverse — from art director or fundraiser to elevator and escalator repairer and computer hardware engineer — and require different skills, education and experience. That’s one reason there can’t be one top job. The list also measures the job’s potential income, annual openings over 10 years and industry projected job growth.

And there are two types of top jobs, based on income. Sixty “tier one” jobs have an annual median income above $86,320, while the 103 “tier two” jobs pay between $52,978 and $86,319, based on Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s living wage calculator.

Using that data, which is publicly available, one can narrow out the top of the top jobs. According to our analysis, here are the top 12 (click on each job title to view more about the work):

Top jobs with median annual income above $86,320:

1. Nurse practitioners : No. 1 for its 10-year growth rate of 62%. That topped second place’s data scientists, with a growth rate of 52%.
2. Family medicine physicians : No. 1 for annual median income, which at $239,200 is , which is 13% higher than No. 2, airline pilots (and copilots and flight engineers)
3. Software developers : No. 1 for the number of openings each year from last year to 2034. At 4,583 openings a year, that’s 8.4% higher than registered nurses, in second highest, with 4,226 new jobs a year.

Top jobs that pay between $52,978 and $86,319:

• Wind turbine service technicians : No. 1 for its 10-year growth rate of 61.1%. In second was physical therapist assistants with a growth rate of 37.9%.
• Cardiovascular technologists and technicians : No. 1 for median wage, at $85,710, followed by personal financial advisors, earning $85,580.
• Sales representatives of services (except advertising, insurance, financial services, and travel): No. 1 for the number of openings with 4,827, compared to second place’s market research analysts and marketing specialists, with 3,705

Other top jobs

Approximately 119 are considered “core or stable jobs” because they’ve been on the list for three years, Gedney said. Others are new, but some had just dropped out and returned. Art directors, for example, are new to the list this year, having dropped out after 2022.

Many of the 42 jobs that fell off last year’s list didn’t meet the 10-year growth rate minimum, including police officers, physicists and refuse and recyclable material collectors.

While recreational vehicle service technicians and manicurists dropped off because of the slower growth rate and not meeting the living-wage criteria.

Gedney doesn’t consider current events, such as the impact of artificial intelligence and whether it’s helping or hurting some occupations. But as part of the report, he mentions “headwinds” that businesses, state leaders, policymakers and career counselors should pay attention to.

A big one is population growth. The state demographer’s recent forecast lowered net migration expectations due to the potential impact of federal policies on international migration. And technology is always something that impacts future jobs, be it AI, automation or the internet.

“Look at retail when you go grocery shopping. How much has that experience at the checkout counter changed for you as a consumer over the last 15 years? It’s because of technology to incorporate self-serve kiosks,” he said, recalling that his first job in high school was working at Safeway. “That’s technological disruption.”

How the report is used

Gedney handles the data. But he said it’s really up to local colleges, workforce centers and other talent organizations to use the report to create their own policies.

“I use the report to ensure that our programming aligns and is responsive to our local communities and the State of Colorado,” said Mandie Dovey, Assistant Dean of Instruction at Colorado Mountain College in Rifle in an email. “The information is helpful and often simply affirms that the Rifle campus is responding effectively and proactively to the needs of our community.”

Over at Metropolitan State University of Denver, the school used the talent pipeline report back when it began developing its Classroom to Career Hub in 2019. It was “a foundational guide for reimagining career services from the ground up,” said Adrienne Martinez, the school’s associate vice president of Classroom to Career Initiatives.

“We intentionally restructured separate units into a unified career-focused team and created industry navigator roles aligned with Colorado’s priority growth sectors, using the report to ground those decisions in real workforce demand,” Martinez said in an email. “Because the vast majority of our students come from local communities and remain in Colorado after graduation, aligning career engagement to the state’s talent needs was not optional — it was essential.”

And well used. Martinez shared that in the last academic year, 9,527 students were active in career-engagement programs, or 52% of MSU’s enrolled students.

Colorado Chamber of Commerce officials said it complements the organization’s own work with business members, partly because it gets government officials’ and educators’ attention.

“It can set off some alarms as the state looks and says we don’t really have any training programs for that and we have to,” said Ed Sealover, the chamber’s vice president of strategic initiatives. “You have to understand what jobs are out there that are not being filled but are good jobs.”

Over the summer, the chamber held regional meetings with employers and educators. Sealover recalled one memorable conversation with the aerospace industry about the challenges of hiring college grads.

“They (educators) came in and said we need to develop all of these new pipelines and they (employers) said, look, the biggest problem is that people who are interested in getting into the aerospace and defense industry don’t know that one-third of the jobs — and two-thirds of the jobs at places like Lockheed Martin Space that work with military contractors — need security clearance,” Sealover said. “Security clearances are an 18-month process and you can’t work for the company until you get that security clearance.”

If schools encouraged students working on aerospace, cybersecurity or computer-science degrees to enroll in programs to get security-clearance ready, such as this training program supported by the state Department of Labor and Employment, they could apply for clearance before applying for jobs. Finding those public and private links helps business.

“And the five-year plan is (to) create a job-sharing program,” he added. “While these folks are waiting to see if they’re getting the security clearance and can’t work for Lockheed Martin or ULA, they can work for a government agency (like one) that takes care of municipal cyber security. Or they can even teach classes in aerospace or cyber security. That way, the public sector could benefit from their knowledge.”

View the 2025 report >> Link

Sun economy stories you may have missed

➔ Colorado approves $200 million-plus package fee plan to launch statewide recycling in 2026. Consumer companies will run program sending grants to local communities for major expansion >> Read story

➔ Mountain home near Aspen, built for monks who labored in silence, sold to Palantir CEO for $120M. The sale of the 3,700-acre St. Benedict’s Monastery in Old Snowmass was one of the largest residential sales in state history >> Read story

➔ US Patent Office picks Montana to replace former regional office in Denver. The agency made a speedy decision after asking for public input on where to put a new office. >> Read story

➔ Steamboat Springs billionaire buys new apartment complex and slashes rent to help curb housing shortage. Venture capital investor and Steamboat Springs resident Mark Stevens acquired the 104-unit Riverview apartment complex for more than $95 million and offered units for well below market rates >> Read story

➔ Trump administration cancels $109M in environmentally focused transportation grants for Colorado. “These projects did not align with President Trump’s ambitious America First agenda or were redundant,” a U.S. Department of Transportation spokesperson said in a statement >> Read story

➔ Colorado’s global imports fall, but export values are up as Trump tariffs continue to impact companies 8 months later. One company estimated it faced a $42 million tax bill under the reciprocal tariffs. >> Read story

Take the poll: So long 2025

Another year of working is almost over. How did 2025 treat you? Share your stories and tips for a better 2026 and help us better understand how Coloradans were impacted financially by taking the What’s Working reader poll. >> Right here

Other working bits

➔ Tipped workers in Edgewater won’t get a raise in 2026. But maybe in 2027? The controversial measure stems from a bill in the last state legislature session to address restaurants struggling with higher operational costs. State lawmakers punted the decision to local municipalities in April.

This week, Edgewater became the first local government to change Colorado’s $3.02 tip credit, which is the amount employers can reduce minimum wage if a tipped worker makes at least that much in tips. In this case, Edgewater will increase its tip credit next year to $4.67, leaving tipped workers at the same wage paid this year, or $13.50. All other minimum wage earners will get a $1.65 hourly increase to $18.17 starting Jan. 1.

The city ordinance also requires city council to study the issue more deeply in 2026 to determine whether further adjustment is needed. If nothing is decided, the credit returns to $3.02, which would mean a big pay raise for tipped workers in 2027. Edgewater’s minimum wage, which began increasing faster than the state’s two years ago, is set to go to $19.99 an hour in 2027.

By comparison, Colorado’s minimum wage, currently $14.81 an hour, increases to $15.16 on Jan. 1. The state’s tipped-minimum wage is $11.79 and increases to $12.14 in 2026.

➔ Denver inflation drops to 2.2%. Consumer prices in the Denver area are still up from a year ago but at 2.2% in November, that’s lower than the national inflation rate of 2.7%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which won’t ever have October data because of the federal government shutdown. Michael Hirniak, the BLS assistant commissioner for regional operations, credited a decline in gas prices as well as the cost of food at home, which typically means grocery prices, down 1.5% from November 2024.

The cost of dining out, though, increased 6% while household furnishings was up 9.3%, likely due to higher U.S. tariffs on imported goods. Medical care was also up by 7.3% in the past year. An analysis by the conservative thinktank Common Sense Institute in Greenwood Village noted that the November report saw “Denver’s largest price drop over any two-month period since January 2019.” >> See details

➔ Holiday travel started Friday at DEN. Denver International Airport expects more than 750,000 passengers between Friday and the Sunday after Christmas. That’s a drop from the 811,000 in last year’s forecast, but last year included two extra days of counting travelers. The busiest days are expected to be Dec. 23, 27 and 28. Watch for carolers in the concourses, the airport says. >> DEN’s travel tips

Got some economic news or business bits Coloradans should know? Tell us: cosun.co/heyww

On that note, What’s Working is taking next week off for the holidays. But The Sun’s journalists will still be reporting from around the state, so be sure to check out our daily coverage online. If you want to share a tip or two, fill out the form at cosun.co/heyww. Have an excellent Christmas and holiday! ~ tamara

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What’s Working is a Colorado Sun column about surviving in today’s economy. Email tamara@coloradosun.com with stories, tips or questions. Read the archive, ask a question at cosun.co/heyww and don’t miss the next one by signing up at coloradosun.com/getww.

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