Colorado Sun: Colorado Salons

4:03 AM MDT on Aug 23, 2021

Colorado’s economy has made progress in the past year and the state’s gross domestic product is expected to reach full recovery by the end of the year. The number of people on unemployment has declined and hit a pandemic low of 6.2% in July, though there are still more than 100,000 Coloradans collecting federal unemployment benefits, which end Sept. 4. Nationwide, the U.S. Department of Labor said 943,000 jobs were added to the market and the unemployment rate fell to 5.4% last month. 

“We have done a marvelous job in the last 12 months or so, but what the next 12 months are going to give us as a challenge is in a way, everybody’s guess,” said Kishore Kulkarni, professor of economics at Metropolitan State University of Denver. “But in a way the effect of this delta variant will be nowhere close to the effect of the first shockwave.”