Oil and gas woes leave Greeley lagging in jobs recovery

DENVER — Colorado last month exceeded the pre-pandemic job totals recorded in March 2020, but that recovery has been uneven with areas such as Greeley — heavily reliant on the oil and gas industry — lagging behind.

Overall, the state has 107% of the jobs that existed prior to the COVID-19 outbreak. That recovery rate “substantially outpaces the U.S. recovery rate of around 93%” and is good for 11th nationwide, Colorado Department of Labor and Employment senior economist Ryan Gedney said Friday upon the state’s release of its February 2022 employment data. 

The Fort Collins/Loveland metropolitan statistical area leads the Northern Colorado and Boulder Valley MSAs with a recovery rate of 101%.

SPONSORED CONTENT

Empowering communities

Rocky Mountain Health Plans (RMHP), part of the UnitedHealthcare family, has pledged its commitment to uplift these communities through substantial investments in organizations addressing the distinct needs of our communities.

The Boulder area’s recovery rate was 94%. The Boulder MSA includes Longmont.

Despite trailing the state average, “I’m not necessarily concerned with Boulder’s recovery rate,” Gedney said. “I think a big part of [the gap between Boulder and other metropolitan areas] is the disruption to education, particularly at the University of Colorado. Boulder has a really high concentration of education employment.”

The Greeley metro area, which includes all of Weld County, saw a dismal recovery rate of 47%, which Gedney attributed to continuing turmoil in the oil and gas industry despite per-barrel price increases over the last year or so.

“Early in the pandemic, crude oil prices fell to historic lows,” resulting in curtailed field operations in places such as Weld County, Gedney said. 

Geopolitical crises such as the war in Ukraine have continued to rattle the global energy markets and operators have not returned to pre-pandemic staffing levels, he said. 

Statewide, the mining and logging sector, of which oil and gas is part, lost about 2,400 jobs between March and April of 2020 and then another roughly 4,800 in the period since. 

The Colorado oil and gas industry appears to mirror those in other energy-producing states such as Texas and North Dakota, Gedney said, where the recovery in the sector has also been slow. 

“None of the states have seen oil and gas employment return to pre-pandemic levels,” he said. 

The multiplier effect that the oil and gas industry has on job creation works the opposite way as well, Gedney said. So, as oil and gas jobs have stagnated in recovery, so too do providers of a host of other goods and services. This is what Gedney thinks could be the case in Weld County. 

Colorado’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 4% in February, down from 4.2% in January and the lowest rate in two years.

Boulder and Broomfield counties posted non-seasonally adjusted jobless rates of 3.2% last month, Larimer 3.5% and Weld 4.3%.

Over the year, the average workweek for all Colorado employees on private nonfarm payrolls decreased from 33.3 to 32.9 hours, while average hourly earnings grew from $30.87 to $33.79, more than the national average hourly earnings of $31.58, according to CDLE data.