Colorado’s top economic indicators were “mixed” for the second quarter of 2024, according to a report by the University of Colorado Boulder and the Colorado Secretary of State.

Job growth is up. So is unemployment. Inflation is cooling, yet prices remain high.

The number of new businesses registering with the state dropped but the report found there are more businesses in good standing than in 2023.

Overall, Colorado is still outperforming the national average in most of the primary economic indicators, said Brian Lewandowski, CU Boulder’s executive director of the Business Research Division.

Halfway into 2024, the economist said, Colorado’s economy is continuing to do better than predicted.

“The economy is performing a little bit better than what we expected last fall,” Lewandowski said, “But at the same time, 2024 is proving to be a slower growth year than 2023.”

Colorado’s job growth in June was at 1.4%, according to the report, close to the national average of 1.6% and ranked 24th.

The state added approximately 4,600 jobs each month this year with the largest annual job gains in the mining, government, education and health sectors.

The biggest annual job losses hit the construction, information, trade, transportation and utilities sectors.

Colorado’s unemployment rate was 3.8% in July, below the national average of 4.3%.

Colorado’s gross domestic product, the primary measurement of the state’s economic health through the production of goods and services, was up 3.3% in the first quarter of the year in the most recent data. It’s expected to continue as the U.S. economy accelerated in Q2, Lewandowski said, despite worries of a bigger slowdown.

Still, the economists are watching to see how long the economy can keep growing with high interest, persistent inflation, slow savings rate and rising debt.

“One of the biggest questions that we have out there, is how does a consumer continue to grow the economy and grow consumption with some of these household headwinds,” Lewandowski.

The report also found the number of new businesses registering with the state dropped to record levels since the state began tracking the data in 2005.

The number of new entity filings was down 21.7% year-over-year in Q2, though the report noted it’s likely due to the surge of new businesses registering since 2022 when Colorado dramatically dropped the price to file with the state to $1.

Now that the program is over, new filings are normalizing, Lewandowski said.

The state is still seeing strength in license renewals, meaning businesses are staying in business, with more than 177,000 renewals in Q2, up 3.7% year over year.