Grand Junction Daily Sentinel Newspaper-September 20, 2008
By Anna Maria Basquez


The Western Slope bucked the recent national spike in unemployment, according to statistics released Friday.

Grand Junction’s unemployment rate dropped from 4.2 percent to 4 percent from July to August. Meanwhile, the statewide figure increased from 5.2 percent to 5.4 percent as part of a national unemployment spike from 5.7 percent to 6.1 percent, a five-year high.

“I think you’re going to be isolated from the vagaries of the larger economy for the foreseeable future,” said Joseph Winter, spokesman for the Colorado Department of Labor and Unemployment. “You had a shade less unemployment. Part of that is when you have school starting and people who are in school or getting ready are not actively seeking employment.”

Winter said he believes Grand Junction’s numbers will be upbeat because of the energy exploration and extraction throughout the region, which is projected to create more jobs.

“You’ll see the blips up and down,” Winter said. “I don’t see you having anywhere near the scale of problems you’ll hear about in certain pockets of the country as a whole. Grand Junction, being the hot spot so to speak, was not affected by any of these larger trends.”

(c) 2008 Cox Newspapers, Inc. - The Daily Sentinel

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