The number of job seekers contacting the Denver Workforce Development center usually picks up after the holidays, and the first week of 2026 was no different.
But what seems unusual this year is who is asking for help, said Bret Walker, director of the city’s three workforce centers, which are among more than 40 facilities statewide to help folks find jobs, gain skills and meet the requirement to get their unemployment checks.
“We are seeing a few more middle-skill and seasoned professionals coming in who had been working in a career for quite some time and were recently laid off and are having a tough transition,” Walker said.
In the past, professionals in tech, finance or other traditional, office-based roles found their next gig without much personal assistance. But perhaps, he theorized, such job seekers hoping to get back to similar roles — and paychecks — found the futility of applying for jobs frustrating enough to finally ask for help.
“That’s when they come in or call or email us and say, ‘Hey, what’s going on?’” Walker said. “We started seeing that around the October time frame pick up a little.”
That jibes with the latest state employment report out this week. Colorado added 2,700 nonfarm payroll jobs between October and November, according to preliminary numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But there were mixed results. The sector with the biggest job losses was professional and business services, down 1,200 jobs in a month.
This is the sector that’s “the main one we’re always talking about being representative of our high-tech, high-skilled economy,” said Brian Lewandowski, an economist and executive director of the Business Research Division at the University of Colorado-Boulder’s Leeds School of Business.
It grew to a high of 502,100 jobs in March 2024, up 12.7% since the end of 2019. But the sector has lost 8,600 jobs since the peak. This professional and business-services space has seen more monthly job losses than gains for the past two years, though the November decline was preceded by three months of growth or no change.
Hope for tech workers
However, Lewandowski said, what’s causing this professional sector to deteriorate isn’t the loss of tech jobs, but loss in a subsector labeled administrative and support and waste management. This group of professional and business services jobs was down 1,500 jobs between October and November, and down 6,500 from a year earlier.
These include jobs in payroll and human resources, distribution logistics, temp work, call centers and janitorial services as well as commercial waste collection and recycling. Some may be related to the ongoing remediation and closure of a chemical weapons plant in Pueblo that impacted 234 workers. Lewandowski wasn’t sure about the cause for the decline, but pointed to a recent Leeds analysis that suggested outsourcing and growth of artificial intelligence could be likely causes.
Another subsector includes the higher-paid tech jobs — scientific and technical. That’s grown since August, an encouraging sign after a few years of massive layoffs at coastal tech companies like Google, Amazon and Salesforce, which have operations here. The state added 5,600 such jobs in the first 11 months last year, after losing 3,800 in 2024.
That’s been noticeable at ActivateWork, a Denver nonprofit providing tuition-free training for non college grads with an aptitude for technology. It recently added an AI-Native Business Intelligence course. The organization also places graduates in IT, network support and cybersecurity jobs and apprenticeships. Employer interest picked up in the fourth quarter with more companies hiring in December, said Helen Young Hayes, who founded the company in 2016.
“Those jobs are out there,” Hayes said. “I think that while many companies put (hiring) on pause, at the end of the day, they really do need enough people on hand to support their employee base. We’ve seen a nice rebound in the last few months.”
ActivateWork is part of a state program that offers employers that hire an apprentice up to $12,600 in state tax credits. There are also grants of up to $8,000 per apprentice. That could be why the company is seeing corporate interest pick up compared with two years ago, when pandemic overhiring went the opposite direction. ActivateWork has placed more than 400 graduates since 2020, according to its impact report.
“The value proposition of apprenticeships has never looked more compelling, given the concerns about the economy or companies entering the year with very cautious plans,” Hayes said.
The “Big Thaw” approaches
Maggie Zeeb, the Colorado-based regional director and employment expert at tech hiring consultancy Robert Half, said employed tech workers seem to be getting antsy.
The company recently surveyed 2,000 employed tech workers in the U.S. about their job plans for 2026. Some 38% plan to look in the first half of 2026, which is up from 27% in July and from 29% a year ago.
“Many workers felt that they had to stay put in 2025, but we’re now seeing a shift from the ‘Big Stay’ to the ‘Big Thaw,’” Zeeb said in an email. “Workers are exploring new opportunities.”
Some of it is due to burnout but it’s more about a desire for better benefits and higher pay. Those most likely to start job hunting are tech and health care workers, working parents and Gen Z professionals seeking promotions or hybrid work.
Not that it’ll be that easy to find a new job even if you have one, said Matthew Pagnotta, branch director and technology jobs expert at Robert Half.
“At the same time, the market is crowded and competitive, with many job seekers pointing to intense competition and skills mismatches as top challenges in their job search,” Pagnotta said in an email.
His tips for finding a new job? Invest in technical certifications, advanced training and hands-on experience with emerging technologies.
“The professionals gaining the most traction are those building specialized, in-demand skills,” he said. “Because these skill sets are harder to find, companies are often willing to pay a premium. Hybrid work models have become common across many roles in Colorado, particularly in the Denver market, and for highly specialized expertise, employers tend to be more flexible with remote arrangements.”