Job losses paint grim picture
10 largest employers maintain ranks but slash 23,000 jobs
By Kelly Pate, Denver Post Business Writer
The massacre has turned to slow bleeding for Colorado's largest employers.
Most of the state's 10 largest employers are locked at the same rank they held last year. Yet, collectively, these retail, technology and health care companies have shed roughly 23,000 jobs in the past year.
The decline contradicts positive movement in the unemployment rate - at 5.5 percent in February, down from 5.7 percent a year earlier - because many long-term unemployed workers are no longer counted in the jobless rate.
Another grim sign is that retail companies - paying some of the lowest wages in the private sector - top the employment chart. Leading the charge is Wal-Mart, the nation's largest discount store and grocer and the world's biggest corporation with $245 billion in annual revenues. The Arkansas retailer has accelerated its growth to open a store a day somewhere in the United States.
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The company employs 20,100 people within its Colorado domain of 17 Wal-Mart stores, 29 Wal- Mart Supercenters, 14 Sam's Clubs and two distribution centers. Hiring continues by the thousands.
Three stores have opened in Colorado since January. Two or three stores are coming to the metro area later this year. Wal-Mart expects to open a total of 15 Colorado stores - mostly supercenters employing 300-550 people - between May and the end of 2004.
"Colorado is a strong market, period," said Wal-Mart spokesman Tom Williams. "And the supercenters are taking hold. The customers are embracing it."
Wal-Mart, Kroger, Safeway, Target, Home Depot and Albertson's - all ranked among Colorado's top 20 employers - employ more than 64,000 people.
Kroger, the parent company of King Soopers and City Market, held its No. 2 spot for the third year running, though total employment has fallen. King Soopers closed a Grand Junction warehouse, which eliminated 300 jobs, said Steve DiCroce, King's director of human resources.
"The rest of (the decline) is that we've not replaced people who've turned over as part of our aggressive cost-control program," he said, referring to the economy and competition. "It's a competitive market, so you've got to stay sharp."
Three SUper Target stores opened in metro Denver last year, including this one at Colorado Mills shopping center in Lakewood.
Supercenter growth has thrust Target into the No. 9 spot on the chart of largest state employers.
Three SuperTarget stores opened in metro Denver last year, adding several hundred jobs per store. But that positive movement can't make up for job losses the past two years in telecommunications, manufacturing, transportation and other fields that pay higher wages than retail.
Less pay turns fewer dollars back into the economy, said Tucker Hart Adams, U.S. bank regional economist. Until consumer spending picks up, the economy will continue reeling, she said.
The situation is made worse by the fact many retail jobs are only part time.
"Not only do you have lower per-hour wages, but you also have people working fewer hours than at Lockheed Martin or Qwest," Adams said. "The retail growth shows me ... people who had manufacturing jobs are taking jobs in lower-paying industries."
Wal-Mart, HealthOne and Target are the only companies among the state's 10 largest employers to add jobs during the past year.
Escalating health care costs have forced some hospitals to cut administrative staff. But Health- One and Centura Health, Colorado's largest hospital systems, competed feverishly to hire nurses, laboratory technicians and other health workers last year.
The hospitals are expected to continue their hiring binge in 2003 as each hospital system opens a new hospital in Douglas County.
Except for Wal-Mart, the state's largest employer, staff size doesn't correlate with financial gains.
At No. 43 on the list of top-performing public Colorado companies, Vail Resorts is the highest-ranking company to rank high in employment, at No. 6.
"People have been moving from jobs with big companies to jobs with smaller companies that are less likely to pay as big salaries," Adams said.
In Colorado, 3,541 fewer people were considered unemployed in February than in February 2002. Yet layoffs continue and job growth hasn't picked up.
The discrepancy can be attributed partly to a swelling number of unemployed people in the shadows.
They are the long-term unemployed - out of a job for nine months or more - who have stopped looking for work. As such, the government no longer counts them in the unemployment rate. Some are relying on a spouse's income or they've gone back to school. Others have given up.
Denver Post business writer Marsha Austin contributed to this report.
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