If you want to know how Colorado is really doing, stop listening to press conferences and start counting jobs. The new Common Sense Institute report is crystal clear. Over the last year Colorado added a net 500 jobs statewide. That is not a typo. Five hundred. For a state of nearly six million people, that is basically flatlining. CSI ranks that as one of the weakest showings in the country, and it gets worse when you peek under the hood. The private sector bled jobs while government payrolls ballooned. That is not a healthy economy. That is a dependency plan with better branding.
Here is the split the Capitol does not want to talk about. From February 2024 to February 2025, Colorado lost 14,700 private sector jobs. At the same time, the public sector added 15,200 jobs. Without that government hiring spree, the headline number would be a deep shade of red. Instead, the state can claim a tiny positive and hope you ignore who is signing the paychecks. CSI calls this out plainly.
Let me translate the political spin. The private economy, the people who make goods and deliver services and pay taxes, shrank. The government, which spends those taxes, expanded. Only seven states failed to add private jobs last year, and we are on that short, embarrassing list. Our private job growth rate clocked in at roughly negative six tenths of a percent, one of the worst rankings in the nation. That is not the Colorado promise. That is Colorado on pause with a hand in your wallet.
Meanwhile, government hiring ran hot. Public jobs jumped by about 15,200, a growth rate just over three percent and among the highest in the country. You do not need an economics degree to see the disconnect. If your family business is laying people off while the state is adding administrators and program managers, you are not being “helped.” You are being crowded out.
It would be one thing if Colorado were stuck in a national slump. We are not. Neighbors like Idaho and Utah managed real growth, comfortably over two percent on the year. We are limping while the folks next door are jogging. Same national inflation, same interest rates, different results. That points to policy.
This is where Governor Jared Polis enters stage left with the confetti cannon. He loves to market himself as a business friendly modernizer. The numbers beg to differ. When government outpaces private enterprise this dramatically, it is because government has been eating first and leaving the bill. Expanding agencies, layering on programs, and inventing new regulatory hoops may thrill the professional class in Denver, but it smothers the shop owner in Greeley and the rig hand in Weld County. The state cannot keep adding referees while the teams score fewer points.
CSI’s bottom line is blunt. Public hiring masked a dismal year for the private economy and pushed Colorado into relying on government employment to keep the charts from going negative. Policymakers should quit patting themselves on the back for growing the one sector that spends money and start asking why the sector that makes money is shrinking. On that, CSI is right.
Let me be fair for a minute, because facts matter more than fan clubs. Some public hiring can be defensible. If a county sheriff is finally filling vacancies, good. If a rural district hires teachers it could not afford before, great. If we untangle mental health backlogs by bringing on clinicians, that saves lives. Population grows and government hires. Understood. But a healthy state does not rely on public payroll growth to offset a private sector in retreat. That is like bragging your diet is working because your pants are looser after you emptied your pockets.
So what now. First, stop pretending this is fine. A net 500 jobs is a rounding error dressed up as progress. Second, freeze non essential state hiring until private employment turns around. If agencies truly need staff, prove it with measurable outcomes, not vibes and talking points. Third, get serious about the cost drivers hammering small business. Scrap the fee gimmicks that act like taxes with a fake mustache. Simplify permits so a builder does not need a translator to start a project. Put real teeth in sunset reviews and actually retire programs that do not deliver.
Fourth, unleash the industries that still put Coloradans to work at scale. Energy, construction, manufacturing, ag. Quit the subsidy cosplay where politically favored tech wins grants while rigs sit idle. Subsidies are not science. If your policy is so good, it should not need a check stapled to it. Open the door for responsible oil and gas development, clear the backlog for infrastructure projects, and fast track shovel ready housing. You want wages up. You want revenue up. You want fewer handouts. Start with growth you do not have to invent.
Fifth, reorient workforce dollars to the jobs that exist. Partner with employers to fund short, targeted training that results in a real offer in hand, not a certificate that collects dust. Tie every program to placement and retention. If the state wants to help, measure it like a business would. If it does not move the needle, move on.
Finally, be honest about the scoreboard. When neighboring states are lapping us, we cannot shrug and call it a mystery. We chose a path that grows government faster than opportunity. That choice has consequences you can tally in lost private paychecks. The fix is not complicated. Get the state out of the way, sharpen the rules that actually protect people, and then let Coloradans do what we have always done when the politicians stop tinkering. We work. We build. We grow. And we do it better than a committee ever will.
Colorado can be the place where Main Street leads and the Capitol follows. Right now we have it backward. Governor Polis can either champion a reversal or keep celebrating a mirage where government expands and private ambition contracts. I know which Colorado I am voting for, and it is not the one that needs a bigger payroll to hide a shrinking economy.
