Editorial: Layoffs, expansions paint cloudy picture for region’s economy

Layoffs happen in any year, as market forces and strategic shifts prompt cost-cutting moves by corporate managers.

Expansions, too, happen all the time, with local companies adding employment or new companies moving into the area.

Sometimes, however, parallel actions — workforce reductions and expansions — paint an especially cloudy picture of where an economy is headed. That’s what we’re seeing in the Boulder Valley and Northern Colorado, with jobs added, and jobs taken away.

Layoffs in many cases are reported to the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment through the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, or WARN Act. Expansions are often hinted at in meetings of the Colorado Economic Development Commission through incentives awarded.

First the subtractions:

• AGC Biologics Inc. revealed in a WARN notice that it would cut 85 jobs in Boulder and Longmont.

• Sodexo Services West will lay off 55 contract employees working at CommonSpirit St. Anthony’s Hospital North in Westminster.

Those follow repeated WARN notices filed by Carestream Health Inc., which is closing its plant in Windsor, affecting a couple hundred employees. And Pfizer has closed its Boulder operation. At one point, that facility employed more than 300 workers.

Now the expansions:

The Colorado Economic Development Commission recently approved incentives for two unknown companies:

• A Boulder County manufacturing company — as yet unidentified — has been offered $6 million in incentives to expand its operations locally. The company also is considering Pennsylvania for the expansion, which could create 314 additional jobs, on top of the 101 currently employed.

• A California-based micro-satellite systems company is considering the Denver metropolitan area — which includes Boulder and Broomfield counties — for a relocation of the company’s headquarters. The project is approved for more than $1.9 million in incentives. The unnamed company also is considering Utah.

Other recent expansions include Broadrange Logistics LLC, which has leased 1.13 million square feet in the 76 Commerce Center in Brighton, and Boulder IQ, a medical-device firm, which has almost doubled its space in Boulder.

Many other examples exist of job cuts and job additions.

So what do these announcements tell us about the region’s economy? In short, not much. But they seem to be keeping with overall uncertainty among Colorado business leaders in general. The latest Leeds Business Confidence Index from the University of Colorado Boulder shows a slight increase in uncertainty among participants, but with respondents remaining moderately optimistic.

Certainly, the Federal Reserve’s recent half-point lowering of interest rates should boost confidence about the direction of the economy. But don’t expect a shift from the pattern we’re seeing when it comes to jobs: More layoffs will come, but more expansions, too.