Phil Castle, The Business Times

Nathan Perry anticipates local economic trends to remain more flat than move up, but they’re also unlikely to drop too far.

“I expect us to move horizontally for a while,” said Perry, an associate professor of economics at Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction who prepares quarterly economic updates for Mesa County.

For the third quarter, sales tax collections, a key measure of consumer spending, held steady. The labor market remained strong, but shortages kept employment levels from exceeding the 2022 peak. Higher interest rates on mortgages slowed real estate sales and home price appreciation. New home construction lagged.

Looking ahead, Perry said interest rates and inflation could relent, but the unemployment rate could tick up and consumer spending moderate.

There’s still the potential for recession, although there’s speculation a sort of “rolling recession” already has occurred that’s affected different industry sectors at different times. “I’d expect a slower 2024,” he said.

For September, Mesa County collected more than $4.2 million in sales taxes. That was a 5.1 percent decrease compared to the same month a year ago. Through the first three quarters of 2023, the county collected more than $36.7 million in sales taxes. That’s up nine-tenths of a percent from the same span in 2022.

For the first half of 2023, the most recent numbers available, the City of Grand Junction collected nearly $28.8 million in sales taxes. That was up almost 1.3 percent from the first half of 2022.

Perry said sales tax collections should increase on a year-over-year basis given the effects of inflation in raising prices.

For September, the latest month for which estimates are available, the seasonally unadjusted unemployment rate in Mesa County stood at 3.3 percent. That’s down four-tenths of a point from August, but up from the 2.7 percent rate a year ago.

Payrolls edged down 68 between September 2022 and September 2023 even as the ranks of the unemployed rose 420. The labor force, which includes the employed and unemployed, increased 352 to 78,031.

At 75,494, Mesa County payrolls remained in September below the 2022 peak of 75,562 reached in August.

That’s an important milestone, Perry said, because it indicates whether the labor market is growing or stagnating. It could be difficult to surpass, though, because of continued labor shortages.

For numbers between the first quarter of 2022 and first quarter of 2023, the leisure and hospitality sector gained 607 jobs, he said. That was followed by an increase of 322 jobs in retail sales and 230 jobs in mining, most of that in oil and natural gas.

Total wages increased the most in retail trades, following by mining and the health care and social assistance sector.

Higher interest rates on mortgages have slowed real estate activity as well as home price appreciation and new home construction, Perry said.

Through the first three quarters of 2023, 2,806 real estate transactions worth a total of $1.23 billion were reported in Mesa County. Compared to the same span in 2022, transactions were down 27.2 percent and dollar volume lagged 26.9 percent.

The median price of homes sold in the first three quarters of 2023 was $390,000. That’s an increase of only eight-tenths of a percent from the same span in 2022.

As of the end of September, there were 514 active residential listings in Mesa County. That’s down 15.3 percent from the same time last year.

Perry said he was most surprised by the extent of the decline in new home construction. Through the first three quarters of 2023, 361 building permits for single-family homes were issued in Mesa County. That’s down 40.6 percent from the same span in 2022.

Over the long term, population growth is expected to fuel economic growth in Mesa County, Perry said. According to the Colorado State Demography Office, the population of Mesa County is expected to reach 162,269 in 2025, 176,032 in 2030 and 190,007 in 2035. Those gains will reflect migration from other areas of Colorado and the United States, he said.

For the short term, economic trends will remain flat. But that’s better than a recession, Perry said. “It’s positive we’re not going down right now.”

To view the Mesa County economic update for the third quarter, log on to www.coloradomesa.edu/business/documents/mesa-county-economic-newsletter-q3-2023.pdf.