Tom Clark, CEO of the Metro Denver EDC.
An upbeat report from the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp., issued Wednesday, sees positive signs in the area’s housing and commercial real estate markets as well as an improvement in employment.
“Employment gains, decreasing vacancy rates in commercial real estate, and strengthening housing trends are all optimistic indicators of the region’s continued economic stabilization,” a digest of the Monthly Economic Summary for August 2012 says.
According to the report, metro Denver home sales through the first seven months of 2012 were 16.8 percent higher than sales reported during the same months of 2011, helping to support higher home sales prices.
“Further, home construction is on the rise with 68.5 percent more residential building permits issued through the first half of 2012 than the first six months of 2011,” the summary said.
Metro Denver’s employment was up 2.2 percent in the first half of this year from the same period of 2011, the report said.
“Although job gains aren’t making a significant dent in the unemployment rate, it’s still promising to see growth in the region’s labor market,” Tom Clark, CEO of the Metro Denver EDC, said in the digest.
“In the last month, we’ve also seen our share of companies receiving impressive contracts or announcing expansion,” he added. “NASA awarded Sierra Nevada Corp. in Louisville a $212.5 million contract to continue development efforts on the Dream Chaser Space System, Centennial-based United Launch Alliance received a $412 million contract to launch a trio of NASA climate missions, and Westminster-based Datalogix Inc. announced plans to hire more than 300 employees over the next five years.”
Click here to download the report.
Compiled by Mark Harden | denvernews@bizjournals.com
Article source: http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/2012/08/08/metro-denver-edc-report-upbeat-about.html
