Sources & References
Metro Job Market Pulse · Colorado Springs, CO MSA · 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
Colorado lost 1,400 nonfarm jobs July to August 2026, third consecutive monthly decline
Colorado Department of Labor and Employment — State payroll employment report
Local Economic Conditions
Colorado Springs MSA unemployment rate at 3.8% as of May 2026
Bureau of Labor Statistics — Metro-level unemployment data, Colorado Springs MSA
El Paso County average weekly wages rose 5.0% year-over-year in Q1 2026
Bureau of Labor Statistics — County Employment and Wages Report, Q1 2026
Open Threads in the Data
Colorado labor force participation fell to 67.4% from 68.1%
Colorado Department of Labor and Employment — State labor force participation data
Looking Ahead
Leeds Business Confidence Index rose 1.3 points but remained below neutral 50
University of Colorado Leeds School of Business — Leeds Business Confidence Index, Q2-Q3 2026
National wage growth slowed to 3.0% against 3.4% inflation
Bureau of Labor Statistics — National Employment Situation and CPI data, September 2026
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