Since the start of the COVID-19 Pandemic, the economic development team at Denver South has been keeping an eye on the business impacts to the region. This has been accomplished through our website and personal one-on-one calls with local business leaders. To that end we have compiled some of the responses and would like to share some of the trends we are seeing.
We spoke to 30 primary employers* in the area representing most industry sectors and ranging in size from 10 to 5,000 employees. Overall, we are seeing the resiliency of our employers through their ability to implement preventive cost-cutting measures and shifts to alternative product or service lines, all while experienced little to no recent changes in employment.
Additionally, the most common change in the workforce was the transition to remote work/teleworking with 90 percent experiencing some blend of telework and essential workforce reporting to a worksite. As it related to their employees, businesses are most concerned with the overall health and well-being of employees as shown in the chart below:
The top concerns for businesses around anticipated future impacts range from financial impacts to consumer behavior to lack of information as shown here:
We at Denver South will continue to monitor the situation and talking with companies. If you would like to lend your voice to the discussion on impacts and the recovery effort, reach out to us!
*Primary employer refers to industries that produce more goods and services than can be consumed by the local economy and therefore export a significant portion of them, bringing new money into the local economy. Such employers play a critical role in economic development by generating tax revenues to local government and wages for employees.
