In 2002, about 33 percent of working Coloradans were age 45 or older, an increase from 24 percent in 1994, the U.S. Census Bureau said today. The share of the Centennial State’s workers who were age 65 or older increased slightly over the period, from about 1.9 percent to 2.7 percent. The analysis of Colorado’s older work force is the result of a new program called Local Employment Dynamics (LED) that was created in a partnership between the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment and the Census Bureau.

   The unique partnership allows employees at both the state and federal levels to work together to get critical information into the hands of people who can benefit from it. The report, A Profile of Older Workers in Colorado [PDF], has been generated from the partnership and highlights the age composition of the state’s work force, job gains and losses for older workers by industry, industries in which older workers are concentrated and their job stability and earnings.

   “With these new data we can see trends develop each quarter within a state or substate area, in which industries the changes occur and the characteristics of workers involved in the changes,” Census Bureau Director Louis Kincannon said. “These indicators give insight into Colorado’s economy and how dynamic its communities are.”

   Some highlights from the Colorado report:

• In 2002, industries in which more than 1-in-5 workers were 55 or older included
  local and suburban transit, membership organizations, educational services, real
  estate and insurance agents/brokers.

• Workers 65 or older were most likely to be employed in 2002 in the service
  industries of eating and drinking places, business services and health services.
  Special-trade construction was also an important source of work for this age group.

• Workers age 55 and over in the rubber and plastics manufacturing industry had
  a low turnover rate. Workers in the local and suburban transit industry had a high turnover rate.

• Among industries in 2002 that employed more than 1,500 people age 65 or older, engineering, accounting and research workers had the highest average monthly earnings ($3,528).

   The LED program consists of individual partnerships between 33 states, the District of Columbia and the Census Bureau. Reports prepared jointly with the partner states on a variety of topics will be released over the upcoming months. The Department of Health and Human Services’ National Institute on Aging, a component of the National Institutes of Health, funded the reports on older workers.

   In addition, quarterly work force indicators on such subjects as job creation and new hires are currently available for Colorado and several other partner states for selected years, age groups and geographic areas, as well as for men and women, at <http://lehd.dsd.census.gov>.

   Because the statistics come from a variety of sources including state administrative records, they are not directly comparable with statistics from household surveys such as the decennial census long form, the American Community Survey and the Current Population Survey.

   Industries are organized by the Standard Industrial Classification system. The LED program also produces data using the North American Industry Classification System.

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As in all data-estimation processes, the results are subject to error arising from data processing or incomplete records. The Census Bureau uses a variety of procedures to minimize such errors.