Economy good; job growth OK

Colorado’s economy remains on track for continued expansion in the first half of 2016 even though slightly fewer businesses formed in the fourth quarter, University of Colorado economists and Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams said Thursday.

A total of 23,306 new entity filings were made with the state during the last three months of the year, down slightly from the 23,360 registered in the fourth quarter of 2014, according to CU’s Quarterly Business & Economic Indicators report based on data from the Secretary of State’s office.

CU economists have watched new entity filings closely during the past eight years as they proved to be a leading indicator heading into the Great Recession.

The fourth-quarter performance will do little to shake job growth expectations for the state in 2016, but it will make that economic outlook a little more shallow, said Brian Lewandowski, associate director of the Business Research Division at CU’s Leeds School of Business.

CU researchers last month projected that the state would add 65,100 jobs in 2016, an increase of 2.6 percent. The economy will continue chugging along, but a tight labor market and high housing costs are expected to constrain some of that growth, he said.

After the quarterly report, CU’s economic model “is still projecting an increase in employment, just not at the pace we have been seeing,” he said.

In all of last year, 102,670 new entities were registered with the state, up from 102,127 in 2014 — a year during which a July through October “fee holiday” was called, dropping the cost of filing for a new business to $1 from $50.

Dissolution filings increased to 24,318 in 2015, up from 21,761 the year before.

Countering the small fourth-quarter drop — which followed a dip in filings for the third quarter — are positive economic indicators, such as an increase in entity renewal filings, higher business confidence and a drop in unemployment.

During October, Colorado’s entities in good standing surpassed the 600,000 mark for the first time.

Colorado finished the year with 601,588 total entities in good standing, up from 570,093 at the end of 2014.

The record number of total entities and the higher number of dissolutions both can be attributed to Colorado’s population boom, Lewandowski said.