UCAR eliminates 21 jobs in Boulder

BOULDER – The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research has eliminated 21 jobs in Boulder and has shuffled some other workers around to other jobs as a result of uncertain federal funding, a spokesman said Wednesday.

The eliminated jobs include some layoffs, some people who are retiring and some currently vacant jobs that will remain unfilled, said Matt Hirschland, UCAR communications director.

UCAR manages Boulder’s National Center for Atmospheric Research, which employs more than 1,500 people in a variety of scientific research areas. Hirschland said people were affected “across all parts of the institution,” but declined to be more specific.

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“We want to be respectful of the folks who are impacted. It certainly is disconcerting,” Hirschland said.

The jobs were eliminated because of the institution’s flat budget for 2011 and rising costs, Hirschland said. UCAR gets its base funding from the National Science Foundation, which has faced uncertainty during the most recent federal budget process. As program funding ebbs and flows from year to year for various projects, money may be added back in for UCAR in the future, Hirschland said. For the current funding cycle, some workers were shifted to other programs, he said.

Government jobs – including University of Colorado jobs and federal lab jobs – are the largest industry sector in Boulder, according to statistics from the Boulder Economic Council. Other federal labs based here include the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration offices in Boulder.

In general, federal labs in Colorado had a $1.5 billion economic impact on the state’s economy in fiscal year 2010. A little less than half of those federal lab jobs are in Boulder County, the rest are in Jefferson County, which is home to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, and in Larimer County, according to a study from the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp. Salaries for federal labs workers in Colorado totaled $743.7 million in 2010.