RyanMcMaken.com

The FBI released new homicide data yesterday showing the US nationwide homicide rate increased to 4.9 per 100,000. That's up from 2014's rate of 4.4 per 100,000. Nevertheless, the US homicide rate remains near a 50 year low , and 2015's rate is comparable to homicide rates found during the late 1950s when the US was in the midst of a historical lull in homicide rates. In Colorado, we find a similar situation. 2010's homicide rate was the lowest recorded since 1960, with 2015's rate up from that. However, the overall trend has generally been flat over the past ten years: In 2015, the Colorado homicide rate increased to 3.2 per 100,000, up from 2014's rate of 2.8 percent. However, 2015's homicide rate is what in no way unusual compared to the last decade of data. These totals are among some of the lowest we've seen in decades. We see little to suggest that the legalization of recreational cannabis use has led to any sizable increase in homicide...

According to the most recent employment data from the Department of Labor and Employment, there were  approximately 101,00 payroll jobs in Greeley during July 2016. That's up from the 98,000 jobs estimated during July of last year. However, total payroll employment in the region has gone only sideways since 2014. In October of 2014, there were 102,000 jobs in the Greeley area, but since then, payroll employment has never exceeded 102,000 positions. In other words, employment growth has been flat for the past two years: Compare this trend to the one in Fort Collins, right next door. In the case of Fort Collins, the overall job trend mirrors that of the state overall with an unbroken upward slope since 2009:  Since 2014, unlike Greeley, Fort Collins has only continued upward on the same trend as before. Oil prices, not surprisingly, appear to be a big factor in this trend in Greeley. Last December, for example, The Tribune reported that " Colorado's oil rig...

August is now behind us, and as a sign of the concern central bankers share over the weakness found in the world's major economies, there is no sign of any effort to rise target rates at central banks.  From the Fed to the European Central Bank, to the Bank of England and beyond, there appears to be no appetite for attempting to return to more "normal" monetary policy. We're apparently in a state of virtual permanency when it comes to "extraordinary" monetary policy which involves keeping the target interest rate at zero or near zero for years on end.  In fact, the only movement we've seen at a major central bank in recent days comes from the Bank of England where the bank cut the target rate from 0.5 percent to 0.25 percent. Except for that change, and continued declines in Australia, nothing has moved since last Spring:  In late July, the Fed declined to raise the Federal Funds rate. But, of course, they maintained the usual posture of sayi...

During the second quarter of 2016, rent growt hin Colorado springs hit an all-time high of 10.2 percent, bringing the average rent in the metro area to 991 dollars, which is also an all-time high. That's up from the first quarter  of this year when the average rent was 959. The average rent during the second quarter of last year was 899 dollars. According to data released by the Colorado Division of Housing , the average rent in Colorado Springs continues to grow at a historically high rates: The last time the average rent grew at a similar rate was during the dot-com boom at the very end of the 1990s. If we look at the average rent over, time, we find that the general trend has, not surprisingly been upward, but has increased more rapidly over the past five years than was the case during the previous decade: Looking just at nominal rent levels, however, can be misleading, and if we adjust for inflation using the nationwide CPI, we find that rents actually went down in r...

According to federal bankruptcy court records , there were 1,106 bankruptcy filings in Colorado during August. That's up 11 percent from July's total of 990, and it's down 8.5 percent from August 2015's total of 1,208. Overall, the general trend has been downward since 2010, as we can see in the first graph: An unusual thing happened in August, though: bankruptcy filings increased from July to August. Since 2007, this only happened once before, during 2011.  In other words, bankruptcies usually fall during this period, but from July to August of this year, bankruptcies rose at the highest rate experience since 2006: It remains to be seen whether or not this signals a change in the downward trend we've seen seeing for the past six years. There have been other indicators, though, that this year bankruptcy activity has been leveling off, rather than continuing the sharp down ward trend that we saw from about 2012 to 2015. The next graph shows how year-ove...

Through July of this year, the Pueblo area reported 156 permits for private housing units. That's an increase of 13.3 percent compared to 2015, although overall permitting activity is up from the low points experienced in the wake of the 2007-2009 recession. (All permit data used in this article is form the Census Bureau.) The first graph shows total permit activity for each year for the period of January-July: While permits are down this year compared to last, they are nonetheless up compared to every year in the period from 2011-2014. Over the past decade, only three years showed increases over the previous year. The second graph shows year-to-year change in permits for the period from January-July (values are in %): Most of the past decade has reflected an experience of declining permit activity from the housing-bubble highs prior to 2008. A significant decline began in 2007 and the area really didn't begin to show signs of life again until 2015. The vast majo...

For now, there are few dark clouds on the horizon for payroll employment totals in Colorado. While employment growth has softened somewhat since 2014, it remains well above zero. According to state-level employment data, released on August 22 , year-over-year employment growth in Colorado increased 3 percent, which was the largest increase since July of last year when growth reached 3.2 percent. There were a total of 2.62 million jobs in Colorado in July, compared to 2.55 million jobs one year earlier. That equates to 76,000 more jobs, year-over-year. This should not be equated for new employed persons, however, as this measure of employment counts only jobs and not people. Thus, a single person with two jobs would show up as two jobs by this measure, and two job holders should not be assumed. The Household Survey, which counts employed persons, will be considered in a separate post. Nevertheless, job growth, strictly speaking, continues in positive territory. On a month-...