Colorado's economic growth will be among the 10 best of all states in the country, according to the 2016 economic outlook from University of Colorado Boulder’s Leeds School of Business.
The annual Colorado Business Forum will be held Monday in Denver.
The trend for employment growth over the last two years is slightly down and the outlook predicts the state will continue to see a tightening work force and talent gap going into 2016.
“We’re going to continue to need to bring in a workforce from outside the state of Colorado in order to fill our employment needs," CU economist Richard Wobbekind said.
Colorado is not producing enough engineers, scientists and computer programmers, he said. And the shortage of workers is broad-based, from the retail sector to specialized construction workers.
But with low unemployment in the state, Wobbekind expects wages will go up for a lot of people.
“Wages are going to have to rise if employers want to fill empty positions and that should be a good thing for both the individual and also household incomes which have been stagnant since the recession,” he said.
They’re predicting state agriculture revenues to go down, mostly because cattle and dairy prices are falling as costs rise.
