The Colorado economy will be growing at an annual rate of 4.47 percent through June 2022, according to ColoradoCast, the state’s only short-term economic forecast. This is a slowdown from the previous ColoradoCast’s April 2022 forecast rate of growth, but still a healthy, albeit more normal, growth projection.
The slight slowdown in growth is attributed to lags in certain drivers of the economy, most notably equity and bond markets. Although some drivers of the economy used for the ColoradoCast continue to carry the economy, such as rising housing values.
“The slight slowdown likely reflects a continued normalization of economic growth as the time moves further from the early months of the pandemic,” said Dr. Phyllis Resnick, director of the Colorado Futures Center. “The economy is projected to achieve annual growth rates that are robust by historical standards and an anticipated beginning of a return to more historically normal rates of economic growth – growth less distorted by the collective responses to the COVID pandemic.”
The forecast was completed prior to the recent events in Ukraine, and “a protraction of those events and the economic sanctions that result, likely will impact economic growth in the United States,” Resnick said.
The Colorado Futures Center will monitor the impact of the events on the ColoradoCast and release an interim update preceding the scheduled quarterly release (May 2022), should the outlook change dramatically.
The gap the report fills within economic forecasts and the importance of understanding short-term economic projections to businesses is key, said Senior Vice Chancellor and CFO of the CSU System Henry Sobanet: “We were so pleased with the response to the first ColoradoCast and are very appreciative of the work by the Colorado Futures Center create this new insight for Colorado’s short-term economic forecasting.”
Download the full report here.
