Denver-metro financial activities employers had 112,600 people on payroll in September 2026, down 3.2% from a year earlier. That is 6.8% of all payroll jobs in the metro, against 7.1% a year before.

Finance and insurance plus real estate, rental and leasing — banks, insurers, mortgage lenders, brokers and property managers. Real estate and lending also make it sensitive to interest rates in a way most sectors are not.

The two charts answer different questions. The count peaked at 120,000 in July 2022 and says whether the sector is hiring. The share — from 7.8% in January 1990, with a high of 8.6% in February 2004 and a low of 6.8% in September 2026 — says whether it is growing faster or slower than the rest of the economy.

Not seasonally adjusted, so compare a month with the same month a year earlier. The share is computed at read time from two series in the same BLS release, so it stays consistent when the levels are revised.

Denver-metro government employers had 232,700 people on payroll in September 2026, down 0.3% from a year earlier. That is 14.1% of all payroll jobs in the metro, against 14.2% a year before.

Federal, state and local government, including public schools, the University of Colorado, public hospitals and the Postal Service — and, because BLS counts them as local government, tribal enterprises such as casinos. Government hiring follows tax revenue with a lag, which is why its share tends to rise in a recession: the private sector cuts first. The deep sawtooth in both lines is the school year — public-school staff come off the payroll count every summer — so this series above all needs the year-over-year comparison.

The two charts answer different questions. The count peaked at 235,100 in May 2025 and says whether the sector is hiring. The share — from 15.2% in January 1990, with a high of 16.0% in February 1992 and a low of 12.3% in July 2000 — says whether it is growing faster or slower than the rest of the economy.

Not seasonally adjusted, so compare a month with the same month a year earlier. The share is computed at read time from two series in the same BLS release, so it stays consistent when the levels are revised.

Denver-metro education and health employers had 231,100 people on payroll in September 2026, up 4.6% from a year earlier. That is 14.0% of all payroll jobs in the metro, against 13.5% a year before.

This is the private sector only: hospitals, clinics, nursing and residential care, social assistance, private schools and colleges. Public schools and the University of Colorado are counted as government. It is the steadiest sector in the data, because demand follows the size and the age of the population rather than the business cycle — the one sharp break in its line is spring 2020, when elective care stopped.

The two charts answer different questions. The count peaked at 231,100 in September 2026 and says whether the sector is hiring. The share — from 8.5% in January 1990, with a high of 14.1% in April 2026 and a low of 8.3% in June 1990 — says whether it is growing faster or slower than the rest of the economy.

Not seasonally adjusted, so compare a month with the same month a year earlier. The share is computed at read time from two series in the same BLS release, so it stays consistent when the levels are revised.

Denver-metro trade, transportation and utilities employers had 284,200 people on payroll in September 2026, down 1.5% from a year earlier. That is 17.3% of all payroll jobs in the metro, against 17.6% a year before.

The broadest supersector in the survey: wholesale and retail trade, warehousing, trucking, air and water transport, couriers and utilities.

The two charts answer different questions. The count peaked at 306,300 in December 2023 and says whether the sector is hiring. The share — from 22.0% in January 1990, with a high of 22.1% in December 1990 and a low of 17.3% in September 2026 — says whether it is growing faster or slower than the rest of the economy.

Not seasonally adjusted, so compare a month with the same month a year earlier. The share is computed at read time from two series in the same BLS release, so it stays consistent when the levels are revised.

Colorado workers filed 3,085 initial unemployment claims in the week ending Oct 17, 2026; the steadier four-week average is 3,103, down 8.4% from the same weeks a year ago.

Read the chart in two parts. The y axis is broken at 8,000. Below the break is where this series lives: almost every week since 1985 is in that band, and on its own scale the normal shape is plain — a spike every winter as construction and seasonal retail lay off, and a sustained rise through 2008-09. Above the break, on a compressed scale, is the spring of 2020, when claims reached 104,572 in the week of Apr 11, 2020. On a single axis that one episode flattens 41 years into a line along the floor.

Claims are the fastest labour-market number there is — a week old when published — and the noisiest. One week is a data point; the four-week average is the reading. Statewide, not seasonally adjusted, so compare with the same weeks a year earlier rather than the week before.

Denver-metro professional and business services employers had 317,700 people on payroll in September 2026, up 1.2% from a year earlier. That is 19.3% of all payroll jobs in the metro, against 19.1% a year before.

This is one of the metro’s largest supersectors, and the least understood. It covers professional, scientific and technical services — law, accounting, engineering, architecture, computer systems design — plus the head offices of companies, and administrative support, which includes temp agencies and building services. A good share of what Denver calls tech work is counted here rather than under ‘information’. The temp-help piece makes it one of the first sectors to cut in a downturn: agency workers are the easiest jobs to end.

The two charts answer different questions. The count peaked at 326,700 in August 2023 and says whether the sector is hiring. The share — from 14.8% in January 1990, with a high of 19.9% in August 2023 and a low of 14.8% in January 1990 — says whether it is growing faster or slower than the rest of the economy.

Not seasonally adjusted, so compare a month with the same month a year earlier. The share is computed at read time from two series in the same BLS release, so it stays consistent when the levels are revised.

Denver-metro restaurants, bars, hotels and venues employed 176,600 people in September 2026, up 0.7% from a year earlier — 10.7% of all payroll jobs in the metro.

No other series on this site records 2020 as plainly. Employment in this sector fell from 168,000 in February 2020 to 86,600 in April 2020 — a drop of 48%, inside two months, in an industry that cannot be done from home — and its share of the region’s jobs fell to 6.4%. Everything to the right of that notch is the recovery.

The share chart is the longer story: from 8.7% when the series opens in January 1990 to a peak of 11.8% in July 2017.

Not seasonally adjusted, and summer is genuinely the busy season here, so compare with the same month a year earlier. The share is computed at read time from the same BLS release as the count.

The Denver metro’s information sector employed 43,800 people in September 2026, down 4.8% from a year earlier. That is 2.7% of every payroll job in the metro, against 2.8% a year before.

The two charts answer different questions. The head count says whether the sector is hiring. The share says whether it is hiring faster than everyone else — a sector can add jobs every month and still shrink as a part of the economy. The count peaked at 73,300 in December 2000; the share peaked at 6.1% in January 2001, up from 4.3% when the series opens in January 1990.

‘Information’ is not ‘tech’, and the gap is large. It is the BLS sector covering software publishers, telecoms, broadcasting and publishing. A great deal of Denver technology work is booked elsewhere — aerospace makers such as Lockheed Martin and Ball are classified under manufacturing, cloud infrastructure lands under several other headings, and contract engineering sits in professional services — so read this line as a floor on tech employment rather than a measure of it. What it is good for is the trend: the classification has been applied consistently since 1990, so the shape is right even where the level is low.

Not seasonally adjusted, which is why both lines have an annual wobble on top of the trend; compare a month with the same month a year earlier. The share is computed at read time from two series in the same BLS release, so it stays consistent when the levels are revised.

Denver–Aurora–Centennial employers reported 1,645,700 nonfarm jobs in September 2026 (not seasonally adjusted), up 4,100 — +0.2% — from a year earlier. Set against everyone who lives in the metro, that is 53.2 payroll jobs for every 100 residents, against 53.1 a year before.

The second chart is there because a count of jobs always grows in a growing region. Jobs per resident does not have to: it peaked at 55.9 in December 2000, fell to 45.5 in January 2010, and says whether the job machine is keeping up with the people arriving to use it.

It is not the employment rate, and the difference matters. The official rate counts people with work, by where they live, as a share of adults. This counts jobs at employers in the metro — a second job counts twice, and someone commuting in from outside the metro counts here — divided by every resident, children and retirees included. So an ageing population pulls it down with no change in the job market. Read the direction, not the level.

The population is the Census Bureau’s July 1 estimate for the same 10-county metro, interpolated between years; the chart starts in 2000 because that is where the annual estimates on FRED begin. Because payrolls aren’t seasonally adjusted, the year-over-year change is the one to watch.

Denver-metro manufacturers employed 62,500 people in September 2026, down 3.7% from a year earlier — 3.8% of all payroll jobs in the metro. The sector peaked at 90,100 jobs in December 1997 and has shed roughly 31% of that since.

The second chart is the share: it went from 10.2% in January 1990 to 3.8% now.

Numerator and denominator of the share come from the same BLS release for the same metro, so it stays consistent when the levels are revised; it is computed at read time, never stored.

Homes in the Denver metro sold for 98.6% of their list price on average in August 2026, against 98.6% a year earlier, and 23% of them sold above it. The most competitive month in this record was April 2022, at 107.3% of list.

At September 2026’s pace of sales, the homes for sale would last 5.2 months — months of supply, for-sale inventory over a month’s sales. Under about four months is a market where sellers set the terms; six or more is one where buyers do. 3,003 homes sold in September 2026, against 3,358 a year earlier.

Every one of these has a season — spring is the bidding season — so compare a month with the same month a year earlier. These are Zillow’s figures for the Denver-Aurora-Centennial metro, all homes, not seasonally adjusted; the newest month of sales is Zillow’s nowcast and firms up later. There is no median price here, on purpose: a median moves with which homes happen to sell, so a month heavy in condos reads as a fall in prices that did not happen.

The typical asking rent in the Denver metro was $1,900 a month in September 2026, up 0.0% from a year earlier.

The second chart takes inflation out. The price index runs through September 2026, and in that month’s dollars the typical asking rent was $1,900, down 3.6% in real terms on the year and 12% below its real peak of $2,158 in September 2021. When the nominal line climbs and the real one does not, rents are rising more slowly than prices in general — which is not the same thing as rent getting affordable, since that depends on what renters earn.

ZORI tracks new leases, not the average rent paid across all tenants, so it turns roughly a year before the rent component of the local CPI does — which makes it the leading indicator of the two. The real series is deflated by the national CPI-U (all items, NSA) and stated in dollars of the latest month the CPI covers, so it can end a month before the nominal line. Rent is itself part of the CPI, so the real line is rent measured in purchasing power, not rent net of rent inflation.

The typical Denver-area home was worth $555,487 in September 2026, and the typical asking rent was $1,900 a month. Divide the first by a year of the second and you get the price-to-rent ratio: 24.4. A Denver house costs about 24 years of the rent on it.

It is the cleanest single number for whether housing is expensive relative to itself. Prices and rents are both driven by local incomes and local supply, so when they rise together the ratio holds flat and the market is simply pricier; when prices pull away from rents, buyers are paying for something other than the shelter — expected appreciation, or cheap credit. Nationally a ratio in the high teens is typical. Denver’s has run from 12.6 (January 2000) to 27.2 (May 2022), and it is 24.4 now, down 1.8% on the year.

Two things it is not. It is not a buy-versus-rent recommendation: that depends on mortgage rates, the tax treatment of the interest, and how long you stay, none of which is in here. And the two legs measure slightly different housing — ZHVI values the whole owner-occupied stock, ZORI tracks asking rents on units coming to market, which skew smaller and newer. The level is therefore approximate; the direction is the signal.

Colorado workers filed 3,085 initial unemployment claims in the week ending Oct 17, 2026; the steadier four-week average is 3,103, down 8.4% from the same weeks a year ago.

Read the chart in two parts. The y axis is broken at 8,000. Below the break is where this series lives: almost every week since 1985 is in that band, and on its own scale the normal shape is plain — a spike every winter as construction and seasonal retail lay off, and a sustained rise through 2008-09. Above the break, on a compressed scale, is the spring of 2020, when claims reached 104,572 in the week of Apr 11, 2020. On a single axis that one episode flattens 41 years into a line along the floor.

Claims are the fastest labour-market number there is — a week old when published — and the noisiest. One week is a data point; the four-week average is the reading. Statewide, not seasonally adjusted, so compare with the same weeks a year earlier rather than the week before.

The typical Denver-metro home was worth $555,487 in September 2026, down 1.8% from a year earlier. Against the series high of $609,487 in June 2022, that leaves the market 8.9% below its high-water mark in the dollars on the price tag.

The second chart takes inflation out. The price index runs through September 2026, and in that month’s dollars the typical home was worth $555,487, down 5.3% in real terms on the year. The real peak was $695,966 in May 2022, and today sits 20% below it. A flat price in a year of inflation is a fall in what a house is worth measured in everything else a household buys.

ZHVI measures the value of the typical home rather than the price of the homes that happened to sell, so it does not lurch when an expensive neighbourhood has a busy month — which is what makes it readable month to month, and a better trend line than asking prices.

The real series is deflated by the national CPI-U (all items, not seasonally adjusted) and stated in dollars of the latest month the CPI covers, so it can end a month before the nominal line. National rather than Denver CPI because the Denver index is published only every other month. Shelter is about a third of CPI-U, so read the real line as a house measured in purchasing power, not as house prices net of housing inflation. Metro-wide; Zillow revises the back series when its model is updated, so older points can move slightly between builds.

3.87 million passengers boarded flights out of DIA in July 2026, down 0.9% from a year earlier. 235,167 of them were on international flights, down 1.1%. Over the last twelve months departures averaged 3.36 million a month, against 3.36 million at the record, in the year to June 2026.

These are departures only, from the airlines’ own monthly reports to the federal government. The Denver International Airport’s headline passenger count adds arrivals, so it runs about twice these figures. A traveller connecting through DIA counts on the flight they leave on. Summer is the peak and winter the low every year, so compare a month with the same month a year earlier. The figures arrive about three months after the month they count.

Coloradans filed 14,437 new business applications in September 2026, up 36.2% from a year earlier. These are EIN filings, so the series measures intent to start a business rather than businesses that actually open — but it lands about 11 days after the month ends, which makes it one of the fastest real-activity readings available for the state. Note the step-change after 2020: application rates never returned to their pre-pandemic level.

Colorado workers filed 3,085 initial unemployment claims in the week ending Oct 17, 2026; the steadier four-week average is 3,103, down 8.4% from the same weeks a year ago.

Read the chart in two parts. The y axis is broken at 8,000. Below the break is where this series lives: almost every week since 1985 is in that band, and on its own scale the normal shape is plain — a spike every winter as construction and seasonal retail lay off, and a sustained rise through 2008-09. Above the break, on a compressed scale, is the spring of 2020, when claims reached 104,572 in the week of Apr 11, 2020. On a single axis that one episode flattens 41 years into a line along the floor.

Claims are the fastest labour-market number there is — a week old when published — and the noisiest. One week is a data point; the four-week average is the reading. Statewide, not seasonally adjusted, so compare with the same weeks a year earlier rather than the week before.

The Denver–Aurora–Centennial labor force — everyone employed or actively looking for work — was 1,738,331 in August 2026, down 2.9% from a year earlier. It’s the head-count denominator under the unemployment rate: a labor force that grows with population and participation. Not seasonally adjusted.

The median Denver County listing sat 57 days on the market in September 2026, against 64 days a year earlier. Days on market is the market’s pulse rather than its price: it says how long sellers wait, and it moves before asking prices do, because a seller cuts the price only after the waiting has already happened.

The seasonal pattern is severe and it is not a trend — listings move fastest in spring and slowest in December, every year, and the only honest comparison is to the same month a year ago. Over the whole series the fastest month was 7 days (April 2022) and the slowest 79 (December 2025).