Mesa County Drained by Loss of Energy Jobs
By Nancy Lofholm
GRAND JUNCTION — David Kelley is hunched over a crowded table at the Mesa County WorkForce Center, filling out an application he hopes will land him behind the wheel of a long-haul truck.
He’s been out of work since he lost his oil-field job nearly a year ago. And he’s getting frustrated in a county that has earned the depressing distinction of having the highest percentage of job losses in the country in the past year and the highest number of foreclosures in the state.
Grand Junction, with a booming energy industry, was still economically healthy when the recession began hurting the rest of the state and country. But a drop in demand for oil that sent prices plummeting from $147 a barrel in the summer of 2008 to around $33 a barrel by the end of that year brought the Mesa County area a double whammy of lost energy jobs and general recession. The loss of the energy jobs rippled through other businesses. Unemployment spiked from 3.7 percent in the fall of 2008 to 9 percent today.
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Filed Under: ARCHIVES • Western Slope
Tags: colorado oil and gas industry • Mesa County • Western Slope
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