The numbers Polis didn’t tweet about Colorado’s workforce decline

By Mike O’Donnell | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice

I found it curious that Governor Polis felt a need to post to his half a dozen, die-hard, mentally-ill supporters on ‘X’ this week, a tweet to the effect that contrary to President Trump’s assertion that people are leaving Colorado “in droves,” Colorado’s population has continued to GROW under his august leadership since 2019.

To support this assertion, he pasted a screenshot from factcheck.org stating that “since Polis took office in 2019, the moderate upward trend in the state’s population over the last decade has continued, although the data is only through 2022.”

Facts matter.

Despite claims to the contrary, Coloradans are not leaving “in droves.” Independent data from the U.S. Census, USAFacts, and our State Demography Office show that Colorado’s population has continued to grow since 2019 and is now estimated at 6 million. How we deal… pic.twitter.com/H88Qy2KUYF

— Governor Jared Polis (@GovofCO) January 12, 2026

This fact checker also stated that similar supporting data was available from the State Demography Office through 2025, although they failed to note that the State Demographer has already made one downward adjustment to their forward population projections. They may likely have to make another.

At the start of this current legislative session, it is important for our portly governor, in his last year of office, to give his cis-Democrat legislative colleagues the confidence to create more unnecessary programs, raise more fees, and spend more taxpayer funds than they did during the last budget cycle. 

For this to happen, though, Colorado’s population needs to be increasing and more Coloradans need to be gainfully employed. 

The included chart shows how Colorado’s civilian labor force has mostly grown, month by month, since 1990. (The civilian labor force counts the number of individuals either employed or actively looking for work.) 

This statistic will always be less than the state’s population count because it doesn’t include children and younger people not actively seeking work, nor does it include Coloradans who have voluntarily withdrawn or retired from the workforce.

Since 1990, Colorado’s population has definitely grown at a much faster rate than the population of the rest of the nation and so has the state’s civilian labor force, as Colorado has ridden the crest of an economic wave few states have been fortunate enough to ride. 

The data shows that there were occasionally months when the civilian labor force didn’t grow very much although even during the global financial crisis of 2008 – 2010, Colorado barely missed a beat. 

The COVID shutdowns were a horse of a different color but with all the government money rapidly injected into the economy, Colorado’s labor force recovered reasonably quickly.

But growth began to slow noticeably toward the end of 2024 and, year to date in 2025 from January through November, Colorado’s civilian labor force fell by 21,628.

The implication here is that the population is also falling, or, at the very least, with fewer people working, there will be less money available for people to spend on goods and services. 

The state budget that the legislature is arguing about (in a one-sided kind of way) as you read this assumes that both the population and the total number of employees in Colorado will grow at a rate that combines the state’s inflation rate with a population growth rate factor. 

For the current state budget to balance, let alone future budgets, gross payroll tax collections, sales tax collections and collections from the myriad other fees imposed on Colorado residents, need to increase at the inflation rate plus a population growth rate factor.

If they don’t, the budget won’t balance and programs will need to be cut. (If you need any suggestions, please give me a call.)

The curious thing about the decline in the state’s civilian labor force is that most of the reduction in numbers occurred among Coloradans who were looking for work. Unemployment fell by 26,841, but not because those people found jobs in Colorado. 

It was most likely because they found jobs in other states and moved there. The number of new employees who joined the Colorado workforce through November 2025 was only 5,213.

Putting this number in perspective, Colorado added 6,400 new state government workers through November 2025. (Let that sink in for a moment.) 

The decline in the civilian labor force is a real-time indicator that Colorado’s population is on the wane. Are there any others?

Well, United Van Lines just recently released its 2025 ‘movers’ survey and found that Colorado ranked as the fifth most moved-out-of-state behind North Dakota, and such gems as California, New York, and New Jersey. 

Interestingly enough, the biggest category of adults moving out of the state were aged 65 and older, and thus less likely to have been included in civilian labor force numbers. The reasons most frequently given by United Van Line clients moving away from Colorado was retirement, health, and the cost of living. 

The governor somehow or other forgot to mention this in his tweet, as did the fact check group he quoted. (I wonder if I could get a job checking “facts”?)

Nor did the governor mention that in 2018, before he and his inept colleagues ascended to power, Colorado was ranked #18 in the nation for violent crimes and #12 for property crimes according to FBI crime statistics. By 2024, Colorado was ranked #6 and #3 respectively.

At the risk of stating the bleeding obvious, people are less likely to move into or stay in a state where crime is on the rise, as it is in Colorado. 

So thank you, governor, for your tweeted words of wisdom, but just let it be. Colorado used to be a better place to live, work and raise a family than it is now. 

You may have been focusing on smart responsible leadership that strengthens the Colorado economy, protects our water (btw, stop seeding clouds! It is messing with our weather patterns!), and building a future that works, but you blew it and the future you are building doesn’t work, and the sooner you and your colleagues wake up to that fact, the better. 

Facts do matter. 

Mike O’Donnell is a small business advocate, nonprofit executive and economic development leader based in Kirk, Colorado. He currently serves as Executive Director of Prairie Rose Development Corp., a mission-driven lender supporting underserved entrepreneurs across the state.

Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.