By AVA FRICKE
The Ramspondents
The Labor Market profile is a report compiled on Northern Colorado labor statistics, commissioned by the Larimer County Economic & Workforce Development, City of Fort Collins Economic Health, and The Fort Collins Area Chamber of Commerce. The aim of this report is to “establish a clear picture of the region's current talent supply, talent demand, and baseline economic characteristics” to those in the Northern Colorado area.
The report states “By documenting the key findings of the Northern Colorado labor market, this profile is designed to help communities effectively develop talent, strengthen career pathways, and meet the long-term workforce needs of industry.”
The report analyzed the different depths of the Northern Colorado labor market and came to eight key findings.
They first determined that Weld County, not Larimer County, is becoming the driver of population growth in the Northern Colorado region.
“Fort Collins has long been a driver of the region’s population increase, the city’s growth has begun to show signs of struggle in the current decade. In more recent years, Northern Colorado’s population gains have been largely driven by ongoing growth in Weld County…” the report said. “Weld County has added over 100,000 residents since 2010 compared to Larimer’s 70,000, with the two counties’ growth rates diverging since 2020.”
The report also found that Northern Colorado benefits from the complementary demographic strengths of its counties.
Some statistics that highlight Fort Collins’s demographic are that residents age 20 through 34 make up more than one third of the city’s population, the city has the smallest share of married households and is the only area where less than a quarter of all households have children, and the share of Fort Collins residents below the poverty line (16%) is higher than that of the Northern Colorado region (10.1%).
There is a distinction in what is defined as impoverished in Fort Collins, as “the similarity in the share of SNAP-receiving households between the two geographies (7.2% citywide compared to 7.5% regionally) suggests a multitude of residents in Fort Collins who are not impoverished in the traditional sense, such as full-time students.” Younger, not as wealthy adults are a valuable assent to the labor market, with the report stating “university towns like Fort Collins provide a source of much-needed skilled workers entering the labor market, thus affording regions like Northern Colorado a talent retention advantage over locations that lack similar institutional drivers.”
Weld County is a different story than Larimer County, and Greeley’s status as a university town is less influential when looking at the socioeconomic data.
“Greeley’s comparatively high share of households with children (33.2%) and its corresponding shares of residents below the poverty line (14.7 percent) and households receiving SNAP (13.6%) suggest that the city is less demographically dominated by its university than Fort Collins,” the report said.
Another key finding is that Northern Colorado’s industries vary significantly by sector and location.
The report found that the three largest industry sectors in Northern Colorado were healthcare, education, and retail trade. These each employed nearly 30,000 regional workers in 2024. The three largest sectors were followed closely by another three sectors that were approaching the 30,000-employee threshold: construction, manufacturing, and accommodation and food services.
The report says, “while these top employment sectors may be close in size, they are distributed across the two county regions in a way that not only explains recent growth patterns but also suggests opportunities for future workforce development.”
In a handful of main employment sectors, there is a strong regional concentration. “In at least four sectors — Professional Services; Arts, Entertainment, & Recreation; Education; and Information and Media — Fort Collins is home to more than one half of the region’s jobs. One in six regional jobs can be traced to the city of Greeley, which itself contains more than one half of Northern Colorado’s Regional & Corporate Operations jobs. Additionally, Greeley’s share of regional Oil, Gas, and Mining jobs is nearly six times that of Fort Collins,” the report said.
The report also found that Fort Collins is a net importer of labor, including work-from-home, while Weld is an exporter.
“Weld County is seeing an ongoing population increase as regional growth patterns shift outward and is similarly a net exporter of labor. More than two-thirds of its working residents commute outward to communities both within and outside of Northern Colorado, like Denver (9.6 percent of working residents), Fort Collins (6.6 percent) and Loveland (4.3 percent). The City of Greeley, a net importer of labor as recently as 2015, is also an exporter, with major destinations including Denver (7.3 percent) and Fort Collins (5.6 percent). Unlike the region as a whole, Fort Collins is a net importer of labor. The almost 50,000 daily workers who commute in from nearby communities represent nearly 60 percent of all jobs within the city,” the report said.
There are also variations in the regional demand for labor across the six industry sectors of opportunity. This analysis focused on six industry sectors: Information Technology, Food Processing and Manufacturing Business Services, Aerospace Bioscience and Medical Devices, and Fabrication and Production Technology Manufacturing.
Fort Collins has the region’s highest education-requiring and most STEM-heavy jobs, including jobs in the Aerospace, Bioscience & Medical Devices, Information Technology and Business Services. Nearby Loveland exceeded Fort Collins’ demand for jobs in the Fabrication & Production Technology Manufacturing industry, while Greeley dominated the Food Processing & Manufacturing industry at 59% of demand.
In these six opportunity sectors, education requirements of employers were high. In four out of the six sectors, most job postings analyzed by the report required at least a bachelor’s degree.
“The region exceeds the national average in terms of educational attainment, with 4 in 10 of its residents over the age of 25 possessing a bachelor’s degree or higher. This relative strength reflects both the presence of a major university in Colorado State, and the regional leadership in driving demand in target industries that typically require high levels of education,” the report said.
The report also ranked the most in-demand occupations by the number of job postings in each opportunity sector and 12 occupations appear in the top 10 for two or more targets. “The top two by job postings were Software Developers and Computer, both occupations are found in the top 10 most common occupations of three target sectors—Aerospace, Business Services, and Information Technology—and both typically require a bachelor’s degree. An additional two of these 12 common occupations typically require a bachelor’s degree—Industrial Engineers and Data Scientists.”
All of the other opportunities on this list require some level of formal education beyond high school, but below a four-year degree. This includes heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers and industrial engineering techniciansThe remaining six occupations require no formal education beyond the high school level.
The report also detailed how completion of a secondary degree correlated to positions available in opportunity sectors. “Higher learning institutions in the Northern Colorado region saw more than 17,500 program completions in 2023, representing a core workforce development strength of the region.”
In 2023, the two largest secondary degree programs by completion were Business Administration & Management, General and Liberal Arts & Sciences/Liberal Studies. “Both programs related to top 10 occupations in all target industries except for Aerospace,” the report said. “The third largest detailed program was Welding Technology/Welder, relating to in-demand occupations in four of the six target sectors. Finally, Computer & Information Sciences, General, the sixth largest, was related to in-demand occupations in three of the six target sectors.”
The labor profile shows a lot of vital trends to inform young people in both Weld and Larimer county of the state and future of the labor market.
The report finished by saying “Looking ahead, regional partners have an opportunity to align data-driven insights with collaborative action. By leveraging the strengths of higher education institutions, tailoring training to in-demand occupations, and addressing barriers to participation, Northern Colorado can facilitate access to employment across all sectors of its growing, diverse economy.”
Ava Fricke is a political journalist focusing on written media.