Economy
Denver County jobs fell 1.3% in March as first-quarter wages rose
New BLS figures show lower covered employment and higher average wages. Here is what the dates, geography and measures actually tell us.
Denver County recorded about 551,000 covered jobs in March 2026, down 1.3% from March a year earlier, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics release published September 4. Average weekly wages in the county reached $2,354 during the first quarter, a 4.4% increase from the corresponding quarter of 2025. BLS identifies these figures as preliminary.
Two measures, two reference periods
Those figures describe different measures over different periods. The employment comparison concerns March. The wage figure covers the first quarter. Neither should be relabeled as a September observation just because the report was released that month. Readers also need to retain the county boundary: these are Denver County figures, rather than a single estimate for the broader metropolitan area.
The underlying Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages draws on employer reports and covers more than 95% of U.S. jobs. BLS publishes county, state and national results, with industry detail where confidentiality restrictions permit. The program provides establishment counts, monthly employment and quarterly wages, making it useful for comparing the same measure across places and periods.
A useful way to read local data
For a local business, a useful reading sequence is to identify the geography, record the observation period and then choose the comparison. A year-over-year employment change and a quarterly wage level answer separate questions. Our practical recommendation is to keep those fields in separate spreadsheet columns, alongside the source link and retrieval date, before using a statistic in a hiring presentation or market update.
What occupational wages add
Occupational wage data add a different perspective. In a separate August 5 release, BLS reported a mean hourly wage of $39.28 across occupations in the Denver–Aurora–Centennial metropolitan area for May 2025. That release includes occupation-level figures and employment shares. Its metropolitan scope, hourly measure and May 2025 reference period should remain attached to any comparison.
A business preparing a staffing budget can use the county series for local employment context and consult occupation-specific estimates for the roles it intends to hire. Treat the choice of which series to use as part of the analysis: save the table heading, units and notes along with the number. County and metropolitan averages provide context for that work; they do not determine what an individual employer will pay.
Updated .