Wooden stools stacked upside down on bar counter at night
It has been months since the first cases were reported in Colorado, and there seems to be no clear end in sight to the 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic.
After months of hardship for many businesses in Colorado, we are starting to see the first numbers and pieces of data about how the state (and the country) has weathered the storm and, at first glance, it’s not great.
A quarterly economic report released this week by the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office and the University of Colorado Boulder, Leeds School of Business, found 8,659 businesses dissolved in the second quarter of 2020 alone. The closures took place amid the height of the COVID-19 lockdown.
New business filings have also taken a hit due to COVID, with a 7.8 percent reduction in second-quarter filings.
There is some good news in some of the other metrics the report keeps tabs on— it indicates that confidence among business leaders, which is measured on the Leeds Business Confidence Index, registered an increase from a dismal 29.7 in Q1 to 44.3.
“Business leaders expressed continued pessimism about the national economy, state economy, and their respective industries,” the report noted, adding business leaders are “signaling a sentiment of an improving economy later this year.”
A particularly scary figure and final takeaway is the fact that according to the report, the state lost 342,700 jobs from January to April and added 126,000 jobs in May and June. Colorado’s unemployment stood at 10.5 percent in June, down from a 12.2 percent peak in April.