The Colorado Futures Center at CSU has shared its latest Q4 ColoradoCast. Consistent with the latest quarters, the Colorado economy is projected to continue to grow, albeit modestly. However, this latest ColoradoCast shows slightly more robust growth than the previous two outlooks, with growth in the range of 2 to 3 percent annual rate. Consistent with ColoradoCast’s message since the reopening of the state’s economy following the pandemic, the Colorado economy continues to show resilience.
Building on the modest momentum of the previous forecast, this outlook shows the Colorado economy sustaining positive growth, and at a rate slightly higher than the recent past. The Colorado economy continues to very slightly overperform the ColoradoCast, further suggesting that this current forecast leans conservative and that the Colorado economy is likely to grow at a modestly healthy rate of between two and three percent annual rate.
For the first time in the ColoradoCast, housing prices are insignificant in the model. This likely is happening because the slight correction housing underwent earlier in 2023 did not disrupt the Colorado economy’s continued path of modest growth. This suggests that the economy has enough resilience to withstand the moderate correction in housing and the associated higher borrowing rates, albeit likely not a more significant one. As with previous runs of the model, the economic performance in Colorado continues to be buoyed by equity markets and in this current model the flattening of the still inverted yield curve.
Supported by the CSU System, the ColoradoCast is the state’s only economic forecast with an outlook less than one year. The ColoradoCast is a short-term (approximately 6 months ahead) economic forecast for the Colorado economy that is designed to forecast a well-known contemporaneous measure of statewide economic activity, the Coincident Economic Activity Index for Colorado, developed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. The Coincident Economic Activity Index includes four indicators: non-farm payroll employment, the unemployment rate, average hours worked in manufacturing and wages and salaries. The trend for the index is set to match the trend for gross state product.
