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Now that median household income data is available for 2014, let's take a new look at how incomes are doing in Colorado. There are numerous measures of median incomes, but two of the easiest to find and most widely used  are the 5-year estimates from the American Community Survey  (ACS) and the data from the Annual Social and Economic Supplement  (CPS ASEC) from the Census Bureau. Let's begin with the ACS data. Using 5-year estimates in current dollars from the ACS, we get the following values for median household income: According to the ACS, the 5-year estimate for median household income in 2014 was $59,448. That was up 1.7 percent from the year before: Overall, however, we can see that over the past four years, the median income has been rather stable. If we adjust for inflation, however, we find that the median incomes have been declining slightly: There are numerous implications to this, of course. If median incomes are basically flat, but hom...

Each Month, the Philadelphia Fed releases its Coincident Index, which is designed to summarize the economy in a single statistic. According to the Philly Fed, the index number combines: nonfarm payroll employment, average hours worked in manufacturing, the unemployment rate, and wage and salary disbursements deflated by the consumer price index (U.S. city average). The trend for each state’s index is set to the trend of its gross domestic product (GDP), so long-term growth in the state’s index matches long-term growth in its GDP. During December 2015, Colorado's index grew by 3.27 percent, year over year. This was identical to November's YOY growth rate, and was down from December 2014's growth rate of 5.53 percent. With November 2015, December's growth rate was tied for the lowest growth rate reported in 44 months. The last time we saw growth at a lower rate was during March 2012 when the index grew 3.20 percent: Compared to the nation overall, Colorado gro...

According to the Federal Housing Finance Agency's " Expanded-Data " index, house prices were up 9.5 percent, year over year, during the fourth quarter of 2015 in Colorado. It was the lowest growth rate in four quarters, but still showed robust growth for what continues to be an upward trend in home prices for much of Colorado: Overall, Colorado has seen growth rates of 8 to 10 percent for the past 13 quarters, although this doesn't quite match the growth experienced toward the end of the dot-com boom of the late 1990s. The YOY growth rate was 107. percent during the third quarter of 2015, and it was 9.4 percent during the fourth quarter of 2014. Most of this was driven by growth in the metro Denver area and northern Colorado. Using the same index, we see that growth in the Denver-Aurora-Lakewood area showed a very similar pattern: In this case, we see the pattern is the same although the growth rates are slightly stronger in metro Denver than for the stat...

The Pew Charitable Trusts last week released its updated survey of federal spending in the states . According to the survey's 2014 data (the most recent available), federal spending in Colorado was equal to 17 percent of the state's GDP, putting it at 15th lowest in the nation:  In total, $51.1 billion in federal dollars were spent in Colorado in 2014. If we compare to Colorado's total GDP of approximately $295 billion it does indeed match up with Pew's number of 17 percent of GDP.  Mapped out, the states look like this.  The states where federal spending is more central to the local economies are generally found in the southeastern US and in the mid-Atlantic region.  New Mexico also, however, is consistently a state that tends to rely heavily on federal spending:  So what's driving the federal spending? Is it welfare, military spending, social security payments or something else?  Last week, we looked at military spending by state and fo...