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Quick links: Economic impact study of USDA move | Quarterly business outlook dims again | AI poll results | Fed worker furloughs | Denver meets Pueblo | Digital Inclusion Week | Take the new reader poll
You might credit a beetle for the USDA choosing Colorado as one of five new regional hubs in July after Trump called the agency “bloated” in a news release July 24.
It started with Colorado State University — then the Morrill-Act College — becoming a land-grant college devoted to agriculture in 1870 (six years before Colorado became a state) and the Colorado General Assembly funding The Colorado Agricultural Experiment Station in Fort Collins (with regional substations in Rocky Ford and Del Norte) 18 years later.
The USDA then established an agricultural research station in Greeley at the behest of potato farmers whose crops were being wiped out by an insatiably hungry beetle in 1914.
From then on, USDA has partnered with CSU on all kinds of research and projects, and “now, there’s a bunch of facilities on CSU’s campus that are run by the USDA,” said Cassandra Moseley, CSU’s vice president for research.
So it’s only logical that Fort Collins would be one of the places the feds want to relocate between 500 and 2,600 employees in the near future. Not to mention that Colorado is an agricultural giant, with more than 36,000 farming operations contributing to its top-10 rank among states producing 14 crop varieties and its ability to sustain 195,000 agriculture-related jobs that produce about $47 billion in annual economic output.
The USDA says the move comes as part of a broader federal strategy to decentralize agencies and bring them closer to the agricultural communities they serve, and, in Colorado’s case, to manage its 14.5 million acres of U.S. Forest Service land.
In the first Trump administration, the government took a similar strategy and moved the Bureau of Land Management to Grand Junction. The Biden administration returned it to D.C. a year later.
But it’s not the first time the federal government expanded the footprint of federal agencies to other parts of the country. Under President Barack Obama, the U.S. Patent and Trademark office picked Denver to be one of four regional offices outside of D.C. to help the agency attract talent and meet inventors where they live.
The Denver office, which oversees a nine-state region, is credited with being a big support of the Denver-Boulder tech startup community. Since opening in 2014, it also added about 350 staffers and patent examiners, as of last month. On Wednesday, USPTO said it would close the Denver office permanently.
Relocating USDA, improving the economy
A new study by Common Sense Institute, a conservative think tank in Greenwood Village that tracks fiscal policy, shows the move will bring big bucks to one of the country’s most important agricultural institutions, CSU, as well as Fort Collins, the surrounding region and the state in coming years.
To assess the immediate economic impacts of a USDA hub in Fort Collins, the Common Sense Institute used regional economic modeling that assumed a one-time increase in federal civilian government employment in 2026, beginning with a conservative estimate of 500 new federal employees representing approximately one-fifth of the total 2,600 USDA workers expected to be relocated across all five regional hubs.
The institute then modeled incremental increases of 1,000, 1,500, 2,000, and ultimately 2,600 employees, the latter representing a scenario in which 100% of the USDA relocators are assumed to live and work in Fort Collins.
(Note: DJ Summers, Common Sense Institute spokesperson, said the study does not account for Colorado’s USDA job cuts by the Department of Government Efficiency earlier this year. “It is simply the impact analysis of what an additional 2,600 employees would do if introduced to Colorado’s economy,” he said.)
The impact on the local economy?
The study also showed the number of jobs would more than double in each relocation scenario, with 500 relocated employees creating 1,228 new jobs; 1,500 creating 3,684; and 2,600 creating 6,386.
Or as Summers put it: “500 new people is not just 500 new jobs, but 500 new salaries that will be spent on goods and services in the Colorado economy: home construction and maintenance, grocery stores, gas stations, etc.” So “the economic activity of those 500 workers produces 1,228 new jobs.”
During a time of economic uncertainty, with Colorado’s budget in crisis, job growth slowing and the number of open jobs dwindling, the projected increase in private nonfarm employment could bring the added benefit of a broader economic ripple effect, the study said.
And that, unlike the beetle that sucked the nutrients out of Colorado’s potato crop in 1914, could feed the state’s economy at a time when it could truly use it.
Section by Tracy Ross | Reporter
Business leaders’ outlook dims again
When asked about current and future hiring plans, sales growth and potential profits, local business executives felt worse about what’s coming in the fourth quarter than they have for most of the year, according to the University of Colorado Boulder’s Leeds School of Business.
The latest Leeds Business Confidence Index dropped 1.9 points to 36 (out of 100), making it the fifth lowest in 23 years. It was lower in the second quarter this year when the threat of double-digit retaliatory tariffs pushed the index to 31, the second worst score since COVID disrupted life in the second quarter of 2020.
While tariffs are still a top concern for business leaders — 162 responded to the survey — politics was the No. 1 reason folks cited for the dour outlook.
Brian Lewandowski, executive director of the CU Leeds business school’s Business Research Division, said he wasn’t sure how often politics was the top concern in the past. But there’s some human interpretation involved because categories are scored from responses to open-ended questions.
“I can’t say exactly (how) the levels that politics has been mentioned in the past, but policy and politics-related comments have always been made,” Lewandowski said in an email. “We categorize the responses as positive, negative, or neutral based on individual responses. Not all perceptions are negative, some are positive.”
When businesses feel uncertain, they may cut costs, limit hiring and just proceed with caution. And all the uncertainty caused by politics this year has led to some of the worst sentiment in years, at or about as low as the index was during the last two recessions.
But looking further out into the new year, there appears to be some hope, or at least not a continued downward slide. As Lewandowski put it, “behavior does not always match expectations.” The index has sentiment up 0.9 points in the first quarter of 2026, thanks to a slight uptick in hiring plans.
As for a looming recession? Lewandowski won’t give a yes or no. But we usually don’t know until after we’re into one, when the National Bureau of Economic Research has declared it. It’s not simply two consecutive quarters of Gross Domestic Product declines. That hasn’t happened yet, according to NBER data.
“This one is certainly top of mind,” he said. “(But) it isn’t just a decrease in GDP or just a slowdown in employment that dictates a recession. I think it is plausible that we continue to record GDP growth in the short term while also experiencing flat job or even negative job growth. Productivity may explain this, perhaps due to AI adoption.”
>> Read report
Section by Tamara Chuang | Business/Technology Reporter
Sun economy stories you may have missed
➔ Colorado steps into federal gap with boosted cash-for-clunkers EV incentives. Buyers turning in old gasoline cars can now get $9,000 off a new EV from the state, up from $6,000, as a federal subsidy drops off >> Read story
➔ Durango, Purgatory land mountain biking world championships in 2030. The hosts of the first-ever world championships in 1990 secure a replay of the seminal contest that debuted mountain biking on a world stage >> Read story
➔ US Patent Office is permanently closing its Denver regional hub. The closure is not part of the federal shutdown that began Wednesday >> Read story
➔ $205M jury award in Colorado amusement park death highlights gaps in once-mighty liability waivers. Since the state’s high court last year questioned previously unassailable liability waivers, juries have issued record-setting awards in wrongful death lawsuits and new lawsuits are targeting ski resorts >> Read story
➔ A monk, Denver’s mayor and Colorado’s governor discuss AI governance. At the second annual DenAI Summit, tech and civic leaders gathered to talk about AI tools and what will happen with the state’s AI law >> Read story
➔ Big loopholes in hospital charity care programs mean patients still get stuck with the tab. Even if people qualify for hospital financial assistance programs, they may not get discounts >> Read story
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Reader poll: AI in Colorado
In last week’s reader poll, 57 people played along about what they wish the new versions of artificial intelligence could do for their lives.
Now, we are hoping to hear from folks who’ve actually experienced AI in the wild. Have you noticed it on job descriptions or social media? Did you know it was AI? Take this week’s new poll and help us report on the trends.
>> Take the poll: cosun.co/WWreallifeAI
Other working bits
➔ Up to 54,300 furloughed federal workers in Colorado could file for unemployment. That’s the estimated number of workers in the state employed by the U.S. government. Not all were furloughed in the current government shutdown, but those who were may be eligible for unemployment benefits in Colorado. They would have to pay it back after returning to work and receiving back pay, according to the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. That’s made possible by the Federal Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019.
But this shutdown has not just furloughed workers, it’s laid some off for good. Earlier this week, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office said it would close the Denver regional office permanently. Bloomberg Law News reported that about 140 workers at the agency nationwide lost their jobs this week.
Those who have lost their job can file for unemployment and normally, the U.S. reimburses the state for any benefits paid. (See the earlier story: “Federal workers on Colorado unemployment benefits. Who pays?”) So far this year, approximately 1,166 federal workers filed for state unemployment benefits, a number the state labor department counted if the applicant’s most recent employer was a federal agency. Workers with questions can call the state’s labor department at 303-318-9000. >> More help for federal workers
➔ Denver and Pueblo business communities team up. A new collaboration between the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation and the Pueblo Economic Development Corporation aims to offer growing and expanding tech and advanced manufacturing companies a place in southern Colorado to take advantage of “Pueblo’s business friendly environment, innovative economic incentive tools, and skilled workforce,” the organizations said in a news release.
PEDCO’s President Jeff Shaw added, “The Front Range is an amazing economic engine, and we look forward to helping make it even more dynamic by bringing Pueblo’s assets into the conversation.”
➔ Digital Inclusion Week starts Monday. What good is new technology if you don’t know how to use it, access it or can’t afford it? If you feel your skills or access are lacking, there are events nationwide (virtual and in-person) starting Monday to help folks learn more about the promise and pitfalls of AI, fraud awareness and prevention (at Senior Planet in Denver) or even the fundamentals of coding (courtesy of the Denver Public Library).
The Colorado Department of Labor and Employment is also hosting a few community events this week. The Digital Inclusion Week was created years ago by the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, an organization that promotes affordable broadband access for rural areas and low-income communities. >> CDLE’s event, national events
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Thanks for sticking with us for this week’s report. Share your 2 cents on how the economy is keeping you down or helping you up at cosun.co/heyww. ~ tamara & tracy
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