Boulder County has enjoyed some of the lowest unemployment in the nation in recent years. The Area Median Income is among the highest in Colorado. Nearly 40,000 new jobs have been added locally in the past decade. Still, a tenth of residents are below the poverty line, and more than a quarter of the population doesn’t earn enough to cover their basic needs.
More people have jobs in professional, scientific and technical services than any other sector in Boulder County, followed by government and health care and social assistance jobs.
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Boulder County’s highest paid workers are in the Information, Finance and Insurance, and Professional and Technical Services industries. They get paid more here than the state average.
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Latino child poverty rates have declined by about two-thirds since 2000 - a promising trend. Still, a tenth of Boulder County residents live below the poverty line overall, including 12% of children. And more than a quarter of the population lives within 200% of the poverty line - an income still far short of covering basic needs.
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Boulder County incomes have remained significantly higher than state and national averages, in good times and in bad. However, the significantly higher cost of living, due mostly to housing costs, pinches pocketbooks here more than most places.
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Boulder County’s high home values mean fewer owners with paid-off mortgages and more renters spending more than 30 percent of their monthly income on rent, compared to national averages.
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Boulder County residents with less than a high school diploma saw an increase in median income by 29% in the last decade. However, residents with at least a bachelor’s degree continue to have almost double the median income earnings of high school dropouts.
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On average, Boulder County women with Bachelor’s and Graduate degrees earn less money than men of equal education, and they earn less than their female counterparts nationally. On the other hand, men with advanced degrees earn more here than their male counterparts nationally.
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The median cost of single family homes has more than doubled across most of Boulder County since 2003, making an already expensive place harder for low- and mid-income people to afford.
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Housing costs have risen so high in Boulder County that, in 2017, the authors of the Longmont Housing Affordability Review declared a complete end to affordable housing. “There are no entry level housing options,” they wrote.
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Condos selling for less than $150,000 have become so scarce that they are no longer tracked. The new threshold for an “affordable” attached home is now less than $275,000.
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Child care costs across Colorado have risen 76% since 2000. Some counties, like Boulder, see a higher annual cost than others.
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Boulder County incomes overall are higher than the national average, yet this is not a reality across the board. Non-Hispanic whites earn significantly more here, but Latinos do not.
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For the first time since 2001, venture capital investments in Colorado cracked the billion-dollar mark in 2017.
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Foreclosures in Boulder County have continued to drop steadily since the 2008 Recession, and in 2018 reached a lower number than we saw in 1996.
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Boulder County is not falling short when it comes to jobs—almost 40,000 jobs were added between 2007-2017, but the same can't be said for houses. Only 11,262 new housing units were authorized in the county from 2007-2017.
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Applications for Medicaid benefits and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families increased again in 2018, while participation in food stamp programs leveled off
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Although the number of families in poverty has declined nationally, the percentage is still high, even in Boulder County. While 8 percent doesn't sound like a lot, it translates to 600 families with children living in poverty in the city of Boulder.
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Boulder County has half as many low-income families as the U.S. and twice as many high-income families. Mid-income families in Boulder County are represented at a slightly smaller percentage than the national average.
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While marijuana legalization exists throughout the entire state of Colorado, local licensing laws and regulations have restricted the proliferation of marijuana businesses in many towns and counties. The City of Boulder is home to most of Boulder County’s medical and recreational marijuana industry.
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With legalization, retail marijuana generates large amounts of tax revenue for the state of Colorado, as retail is taxed at a higher rate than medical marijuana. This tax revenue brings much needed funds to the state to be spent on substance prevention and education programs in schools.
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Twenty-seven percent of Boulder County residents don’t earn enough to cover their basic needs, according to the Colorado Center for Law and Policy. A self-sufficiency wage is what a person would need to earn to cover the bare minimum: housing, transportation, food, health care, taxes, child care if applicable, and miscellaneous costs such as toiletries, clothing, etc.
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