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The good news is that Colorado currently enjoys a low unemployment rate. The bad news is that this attracts people from elsewhere; Colorado is again the Promised Land.
Why is this bad news? Because it means that if there's any prosperity in this state, many of us won't participate in it.
That's the way it worked the last time around, about 20 years ago when Colorado was booming. In those days, I thought it was important to have a job, and I applied for many positions. In every case that I didn't get the job, the job went to someone from out of state.
When I talked to people I grew up with, they had the same sad experience. Even now, they generally work at jobs -- pounding nails, training horses, hauling gravel, washing clothes, baking doughnuts -- which existed long ago. Like me, they missed out on all the glamorous and exciting career opportunities that were supposed to arrive whenever an IBM or Kodak set up shop in Colorado.
My first theory was that the managers of such operations are, by and large, from elsewhere, and it is understandable that they would prefer the familiar.
Assume you arrived last week from elsewhere to serve as personnel director at the company's new Colorado enterprise. Give yourself a choice between two resumes. One applicant went to Michigan State, a school you've heard of, and the other went to Adams State, a school you never heard of. Which one would you pick, other things being equal?
But that didn't explain everything. I kept wondering why a Colorado background was about as helpful as a bad discharge from the Army. After further analysis, I've come up with another explanation.
Colorado, like any other place, requires a certain number of educated and skilled people so that its corporations and institutions can function.
There are two ways to get such people. You can import them, or you can produce them yourself by operating a first-class educational system from kindergarten through graduate school.
Numbers from the census demonstrate which course Colorado takes. Colorado ranks second among all states in the percentage of adults over 25 who have 16 or more years of education. But it ranks only 15th in the percentage of population enrolled in college. This means our state imports college graduates.
And what of those who did attend college here? Colorado ranks 48th in its spending per college student. Little wonder that attending college in Colorado doesn't help much when you're looking for a job; the state didn't think you were worth much as a student, and a prospective employer likely feels the same way when you're an applicant.
There you have the Colorado Philosophy of Education -- if you need educated people, import them, rather than grow your own, which is difficult and expensive. This also keeps taxes low, because the residents of New York and Connecticut pay for these expensive educations, while Colorado gets the product.
This method apparently works, or else Colorado wouldn't be prospering at the moment. But don't expect to share in the prosperity if you grew up here.
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