Sources & References
Metro Job Market Pulse · CO NONMETROPOLITAN AREA · October 2026
Every advertised-pay, job-posting and industry figure in this briefing comes from WageScape's own database of active job postings. The sources below back the external facts cited in the written analysis.
Sources cited in this report
This Month's Takeaways
No official BLS aggregate exists for nonmetro Colorado counties
Bureau of Labor Statistics LAUS program — Metro/nonmetro statistical area methodology
Net domestic migration turned negative in Colorado in 2025
Colorado Business Economic Outlook — State migration and population trend analysis
Local Economic Conditions
Colorado unemployment rose to 4.0% in August 2026, 1,400 jobs lost
Colorado Department of Labor and Employment / BLS — State unemployment and nonfarm payroll figures
Labor force participation fell to 67.4% from 68.1% year-over-year
Bureau of Labor Statistics — Colorado labor force participation data
Looking Ahead
Colorado projects 0.6% job growth and 17,500 new jobs in 2026
Colorado Business Economic Outlook — Annual state employment growth projection
Leeds Business Confidence Index rose 1.3 points but remains below 50
Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado — Quarterly business sentiment index
How the numbers are calculated
- Advertised pay is the median of the pay ranges employers publish in active job postings in this metro. It is not survey or payroll data.
- Percent changes compare the latest six full months with the six months before that, for the same metro and sector.
- Sectors group postings by the employer's industry (NAICS) classification into ten sectors. Where a metro has too few postings in a sector, the state figure is used instead.
- Role pay trends use the same comparison windows. "Stable" means a change of less than 3%; "moderate" 3–10%; "significant" more than 10%.
Official data for comparison