Business/Technology Reporter
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Since its makeover a year ago, the state’s official job board, ConnectingColorado.gov, has helped the labor department learn a lot more about the jobs, the talent and who is actually getting hired.
In fact, as of this week, 7,322 people who’ve applied for a job on the site in the past year had been hired by the employer, said Stephanie Mufic, associate director for strategic engagement at the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment.
“I call it the golden ticket report because that is data that we used to collect manually and get survey feedback on. It was always an estimated number,” Mufic said. “But these are hard matches where we can say they clicked on this job to either apply for it or go to that company website and look at this specific job. And now they’re working for that company.”
This is not your ordinary job site.
But let’s back up a bit to better understand why Connecting Colorado is different. It’s free to post a job and search for one. There are no ads. There are no paid posts. There is a built-in user base because to be eligible for state unemployment benefits, out-of-work Coloradans must register with the site. At the last count, there are 32,238 Coloradans currently collecting unemployment benefits.
There’s a lot more data available, including that those new hires are roughly 2% of nearly 350,000 “apply” clicks made since Jan. 1. But the 7,000 figure is likely a minimum. Still, the data is helping the state figure out how to better help job seekers get hired.
Vetting jobs and employers
Not just any employer can post a job. Companies must pass a series of checks. Their contact information, website and Federal Employer Identification Number, or FEIN, is compared with what’s listed on business records site Dun & Bradstreet. And then local workforce staff separately search for a phone number online and call it.
“They actually talk to a representative from that company, verify that they requested the account and then they will authorize it,” Mufic said. “They also have to meet specific details like, do they have unemployment insurance? Do they have worker’s comp insurance? Are they in good standing with the state and things like that.”
So far, 853 employers have been rejected for not meeting some sort of requirement. But 6,580 companies are approved, including some that were actively posting jobs before the overhaul. The revamped site now provides tools like an applicant tracking system for smaller companies that can’t afford such a service.
About 25% of the jobs are added by local workforce centers, which manage company submissions. The rest come from the National Labor Exchange, a partnership between all state workforce centers in the U.S. and DirectEmployers Association, a nonprofit HR organization (we’ve written about them before). Those may not be vetted as thoroughly but many of the openings come from government agencies and nonprofit sites.
Sitting within the state labor department, the job board has a secret weapon. The labor department already tracks local employers, their hiring, wages and FEIN. There’s extra insight when an employer adds workers.
“We can do a match behind the scenes with the wage data and the information from Connecting Colorado through the clicks that are recorded,” Mufic said. “We know exactly that a person clicked on this job with this company through the FEIN number and we can see that person is now working for that company after the date of that click.”
But even with the extra scrutiny, data access and vetting, it’s not a perfect system. Last week, Connecting Colorado had nearly 290,000 open jobs. This week, there were half as many. Apparently, a glitch in the system had duplicated every listing. That was fixed after a question from The Colorado Sun.
Finding the gap between employers and job seekers
In an economy where job growth has slowed and the labor force is shrinking, there’s a surprisingly large number of jobs available on local job boards. Labor researcher Lightcast estimated that Colorado had 193,000 openings in June, or about 30,000 more than at the end of last year.
At Connecting Colorado on Friday morning, there were 141,816 job openings — a number that bobs up and down throughout the day.
“We’re posting those jobs in real time,” Mufic said.
That’s 1.2 jobs per unemployed Coloradan, the same ratio as just before the pandemic hit in 2020. In other words, there are enough jobs for everyone who is unemployed.
But job openings don’t work like that, and so a high number of openings can cause a big disconnect between employers and applicants. Many jobs posted on Connecting Colorado aren’t even in Colorado, but in neighboring states. Typing in “Colorado” in the location field on Friday resulted in 47,368 active listings in Colorado.
The goal was to fix some of that disconnect between available jobs and job seekers. Connecting Colorado’s overhaul added artificial intelligence to address some of the problems. It focuses on matching skills that employers demand so if an applicant has a related skill, the site may suggest other jobs outside their search.
“We have exactly 4,574 job postings that are requesting artificial intelligence as a skill,” Mufic said. “That is something we would not see in our old system. And then we can look at our supply and see if our job seekers are listing that as a skill and if it’s not showing up that they are, that’s a gap for us.”
Arvada-based Elevate Quantum, which has received federal funding to promote the quantum industry, partnered with the labor department to build a local workforce for the growing number of quantum companies in the region. While that seems like a tough industry to get a foot in the door, there’s a surprisingly large number of people in adjacent jobs who could be trained for roles a company needs, said Lucy Sanders, the Elevate Quantum Workforce Collaborative co-chair. It could be someone who is wiring electronic circuits for stereo components or someone working in advanced manufacturing.
“People who may know how to hand solder (electronics) but would never have thought about the quantum world before, they’ll have access and find that these kinds of jobs could be available to them,” Sanders said. “We’re trying to get more resources into Connecting Colorado for quantum so people who want to upskill or reskill have access to good educational opportunities (at) Front Range Community College or at Emily Griffith (Technical College) or at Fort Lewis College.”
Mufic shared an analysis of the top 20 skills employers want compared to the skills applicants said they have. There’s a big disconnect, as can be seen in the chart below.
But the new system would connect workers who may be in adjacent fields to the jobs most in demand, or at least provide recommendations for suggestions for free or paid training courses at local libraries, workforce centers or private online classes at sites like Coursera or Udemy.
“Part of the reason why we switched to the labor exchange that we have now is because the pandemic showed us that we were looking in a rearview mirror about changes in the labor market,” Mufic said. “It would take us a little while to see the changes and we wanted to see them in real time. We now have the ability to look at the skills gap so we can see the supply of customers on Connecting Colorado and the skills they have and then we see the demand.”
Take the poll: Finding jobs
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Take the poll >> cosun.co/WWjobs26
Fake job posts? Unlikely, researcher says
When you’ve applied to dozens and even hundreds of jobs without hearing a peep from employers, the job listings may seem fake. But, said Ron Hetrick, principal economist with labor-researcher Lightcast, very few are. Why? He shared three reasons:
AI may be somewhat to blame. Hetrick said he hears from many “highly experienced, almost overqualified people getting auto-rejected for not enough experience when they actually had way more than the posting asked for,” he said. “This points to terrible AI screens and HR people either too lazy or overworked to care and try and fix the tools.”
Sun economy stories you may have missed
➔ Fort Morgan meatpackers reach tentative agreement with Cargill to end nearly 70-day lockout. The 1,700 beef processing employees haven’t been allowed to return to work since May 20, when negotiations on a new contract hit a wall >> Read story
➔ Data center fees, special trust, sod tax could help raise $20B to protect water supply in Colorado. Severance tax revenue from energy production has too many ups and downs to stand alone as a reliable source to pay for infrastructure and access to water, new task force report finds >> Read story
➔ Colorado sees another record year for tourism, despite slowing growth in spending and visitation. Two years of slight growth are a warning call the state’s $29.2 billion tourism economy is losing steam >> Read story
➔ Doubled water bills bring politics to a boil in the Pinto Bean Capital of the World. Fight over the basic cost of water and sewer service in the southwestern Colorado town of Dove Creek led to council and staff resignations and now town hall is closed to the public >> Read story
➔ Sundance needs 2,000 volunteers to run its inaugural fest in Boulder. Could you be one? The festival is growing in pretty much every way this year, which means they’ll need to find more help than ever. Based on how competitive volunteer spots have been in the past, that should be no problem. >> Read story
➔ The number of high school grads in Colorado is shrinking. Can colleges weather enrollment drops? Largely fueled by lower birth rates, the number of high school graduates in Colorado is slated to drop 14% by 2041 >> Read story
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Other working bits
➔ Denver apartment rents lower than 2022 though slightly up this year. At $1,776 a month at the end of June, the average Denver metro apartment rent is about $100 lower than in 2022. Lower rents have trended in recent years because of competition as builders completed multifamily projects to meet demand. That pushed vacancy rates higher and encouraged landlords to offer generous discounts and concessions in the past two years, according to the second quarter report from the Apartment Association of Metro Denver.
“From 30,000 feet, I think the big story is that rent today is less than it was four years ago and the constant drumbeat of housing prices are catastrophically high and something dramatic needs to be done about that is just inaccurate,” Drew Hamrick, the association’s senior vice president of government affairs, said Monday during a news conference. “We are the affordable housing solution that’s been provided to Colorado. … There’s a great lesson to be learned there. The free market, when allowed to meet demand, provides affordable housing.”
The second quarter, however, did see rents rise $18 from the March quarter while vacancy rates dropped 1.2 percentage points to 6.3% between first and second quarters, as more tenants signed new leases. The market is doing better at absorbing the new units, which included 3,257 in the second quarter. Since 2024, the metro area has added more than 40,000 new apartment units. But as future building slows, the apartment industry is getting to a more stable market where supply is nearly meeting demand. >> See report
➔ Engineering firm to add 135 jobs in Monument. Employee-owned ACCO Engineered Systems took Colorado up on an offer to expand locally after the state’s Economic Development Commission approved up to $453,000 in incentives over five years.
The company, which currently employs 285 people in Colorado, builds and maintains commercial and industrial HVAC systems. It plans to build a new fabrication facility and invest $36 million into the expansion. The town of Monument also approved a matching $453,060 incentive that is tied to ACCO adding the new full-time workers.
According to the state, the new jobs are expected to pay an average annual wage of $87,037 and include positions like project managers, engineers, and operations. >> Details
➔ Colorado is 150 today. There are festivities galore to celebrate 150 years of statehood, if you’re reading this Aug. 1. Check out The Colorado Sun’s What’s Happening column for events like birthday pancakes, free history museum admission and other fun stuff. There’s also our special Colorado 150 series.
Got some economic news or business bits Coloradans should know? Tell us: cosun.co/heyww
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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