It’s the 11th year of Denver Startup Week, the annual entrepreneurial celebration that starts Monday. And it’s still packed with speakers and sessions on how to start, run, and grow your business. It’s also free.
And because of what we’ve learned about the workers gone missing in the pandemic, many of them have gone into business. it was done. One of them, Chamba, he turned two years after the pandemic started. Chamba is behind her mobile app that connects Latino workers with employers. More specifically, this summer he veered to focus on restaurants.
First, though, state unemployment trends reversed course in August, increasing to 3.4%, a tenth higher than in July. This comes 13 months after unemployment dropped in Colorado.
Ryan Gedney, an economist with the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment on Friday, said there was no need to worry.
“The unemployment rate has gone up for good reason,” Gedney said. “We are seeing increases in both the labor force and employment.
In other words, the Colorado workforce added more people in August, but not everyone is working. Just looking for a job counts as an active member of the state workforce.
According to the latest figures, Colorado added another 7,700 people to its workforce in August, bringing the total to 3,258,000. The number of working-age adults employed or looking for work in August he increased to 69.6%. This is in line with the March 2020 labor force participation rate. Before the pandemic, the last time Colorado had a high labor force participation rate was in November 2011. .
The US unemployment rate rose from 0.2% to 3.7% in August. Gedney said it was for similar reasons. More people joined the workforce. He added that the unemployment rate could also rise if the workforce continues to expand.
“Keep in mind that the rate of 3.4% is incredibly low historically. Again, we continue to see strong employment growth,” he said. rice field. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the unemployment rate goes up, especially if we see a decline in unemployment.”
If companies cut headcount because of recession fears, those workers won’t drop out of the workforce. They lose their jobs and keep looking for their next gig.
In Colorado, the Pueblo metropolitan area had the highest unemployment rate and Boulder had the lowest. Here are the unemployment rates for the state’s major metropolitan areas in August, according to the state’s Department of Labor:
- Boulder, 2.6%
- Colorado Springs, 3.6%
- Denver, 3.3%
- Fort Collins, 2.8%
- Grand Junction, 3.6%
- Greeley, 3.6%
- Pueblo 5.4%
Other Colorado labor data for August:
- Employment in the government sector, including education, declined.
- After more companies reported results, Colorado had fewer jobs than estimated, at 1,900 instead of 2,200.
- Colorado has regained 120.2% of the jobs lost in the first two months of the pandemic. US recovery he was 104.2%.
- Over the course of the year, the average hours worked for Colorado nonfarm workers decreased from 34.4 hours to 33.2 hours, and the average hourly wage increased from $32.12 to $34.17.
- Average hourly wages in Colorado rose 6.4% to $34.17, $1.81 higher than the US average.
Why Chamber says there is no restaurant shortage
The way Diego Montemayor talks about his Denver startup, Chamber, makes you wonder why it didn’t exist before.Chamba is another recruitment app, but like most startups, it has a twist. I have.
Chamba launched a bilingual app in April 2020 to connect Spanish-speaking workers with employers who need them. In late July, Chambers narrowed its focus to the restaurant industry. If you’ve been paying attention to restaurant staffing issues and how hard it is to find workers, especially for the kitchens, bus tables, essentially ‘back of the house’ jobs for untipped workers. , it seems like good timing.
But Montemayor has a different point of view.
“There is no shortage of manpower. We have connectivity issues,” said Montemayor, Chamba’s CEO and co-founder. “And that’s what we’re solving here. We’re connecting restaurants with people looking for this kind of work.”
In other words, employers are “seeking talent from the same talent pool. They are not diversifying where they look for talent, they are looking for the same common places.”
Many companies, including Brothers BBQ, advertise Chamba’s services on the app’s site. Aaron Nelsen, the general manager of his two locations at the restaurant, said he had three interviews and was hired within two days of using Chamba’s app. “We picked the best candidates out of three rounds of interviews,” he said in a video testimony on the Chamba site.
Chamber services can really help employers look to places they probably haven’t looked before. In just a few months, 187 clients have been able to connect with workers in his two cities of Denver and New York. The app has been downloaded more than 172,000 times and has 50,000 job postings from her Apple App Store, said Corina Hierro, her manager and founding member of Chamba’s community. Co-founder and CTO David Ruiz oversaw the development of the app and led the team of developers in Colombia.
Chambers looks beyond audiences that typically rely on Indeed, LinkedIn, and other English-heavy job sites. Available in Spanish and English, the app is marketed to the Latinx community and helps job seekers build their resumes online despite the language barrier.
We also vetted employers by checking online reviews first, and if the company passed the call, Chamba would talk to owners or hiring managers to see how much they invested in their employees. confirm. Employers who seem unconcerned can cause job seekers to feel overwhelmed, he said.
“If they spend a little time with Talent, it’s perfect for Chamba,” he said.
Chambers has big growth plans. This is a venture-backed startup, and so far he has raised more than $1.1 million in seed funding, some of which came from local accelerator program Techstars last year. “Techstars has become our megaphone,” he said. “It put us in front of people who are really going to listen to the social impact we are having on their communities.”
To kick off the company’s Denver Startup Week presence — with Montemayor speaking at a kickoff ceremony around 5 p.m. Monday — Chamba is giving Denver restaurants free access to its app to advertise job openings doing.
Interestingly, many of the job seekers who find Chambers already have restaurant experience. But it’s important to note that many of them are trainable, and Montemayor says he’s found that “trainable talent lasts longer than experienced talent.”
>> chamber app
Going to Denver Startup Week? It takes place September 19-23 in downtown Denver. >> Register for free
→Are you looking for a job? The Denver Startup Week annual job fair will be held on Wednesday, September 21 from 5-9pm at 144 W. Colfax Ave. in Denver. >> register
Inflation slows to 8.1% in August
If prices still look higher than they were a year ago, US economic data, including the Denver metropolitan area, is up 8.1% in August in the Midwest region compared to a year ago.According to the US Consumer Price Index, the Bureau of Labor Statistics
“Slowdown” means higher inflation in May, June and July. The BLS acknowledges the drop in gasoline prices in August.
While the region’s rate is lower than the US rate of 8.3% in August, Denver has been higher for months. Economist Brian Lewandowski said he was surprised that inflation hasn’t fallen as the Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates this year.
“Price growth slowed, but only slightly nationally, with core inflation picking up. We would have expected inflation to fall,” Lewandowski said in an email.
Inflation is taking a toll on local households, and “the average household (expenditure) is about $500 more each month than it was a year ago,” he added.
>> inflation report
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