Like it or not, Colorado’s future as an economic leader will depend on repeating the massive influx of residents that characterized the 2010s.

Let’s lay out Colorado’s economic reality. In the late 2000s and early 2010s, Colorado’s fortunes began to change in earnest. Droves of young workers poured in at the dawn of the tech revolution, fueling the economy and cityscape we know today — the nightlife, the breweries, the events centers and coffee shops. Outdoor culture blossomed. Recreation areas, hiking trails, campsites, reservoirs and rivers and fourteeners grew full of new hobbyists and lifestyle afficionados drawn to the Centennial State’s beauty.

All this energy led to the biggest population boom the state had seen since the oil rush of the 1980s. Colorado’s in-migration from other states peaked significantly in 2015.

That year, no other state had the same power to attract movers from other U.S. states. Colorado capitalized on its natural beauty to a trend-setting level. Throughout the Mountain West, other states followed suit. Idaho, Utah, Montana and Arizona each saw their rush of new residents.

Colorado’s growth was not just a flash in the pan but a sustained pattern that attracted national attention for the glut of people and the ensuing economic success. Through the late 2010s, Colorado was consistently in the top five U.S. states for economic performance and economic momentum, according to the Common Sense Institute’s indices.

How things change.

When Colorado began losing population steam in the early 2020s, it was easy to dismiss it as the same kind of COVID-related plague of economic and demographic impacts that walloped every other state in the union. Three recent data points, however, say that it isn’t.

In the absence of new homegrown Coloradans, the state needs to rely on imports. In the 2010s, this happened just as a natural consequence of Colorado’s attractiveness. Now, the situation has changed.

Statewide net migration was 52.5% lower in 2025 than it was 10 years ago — just over 36,000 fewer people. While 2015 was a big year for Colorado, this decline in net migration is quite evident in 2016, 2017 and 2018. To be clear, more people are still coming to Colorado than are leaving, but the rate of net migration is declining and warrants our attention.

This decline is especially pronounced in the Denver metro, where net migration is down 66% in the past 10 years.

The Denver metro region, inclusive of Denver-Aurora-Centennial, isn’t the destination it once was. The Common Sense Institute analyzed the other cities that compete with Denver metro commercially and culturally — Austin, Texas, Nashville, Tenn., Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Seattle and Tampa, Fla. Among them, only the Denver metro area has seen a decline in net migration in the past 10 years.

It hasn’t always been like this. Colorado’s population swelled in the past two decades. As an example, since 2004, population growth in the Denver metro has far surpassed the average across other metro areas, rising 33% compared with an average of 18%.

However, the growth differential between the Denver metro and other metro areas has narrowed since the pandemic. Since 2020, population growth in the Denver metro area compared with the average across all metros nationally is almost indistinguishable, with Denver rising 2.95% and all metros up 2.84%.

Colorado’s most populated area is shrinking while its competitors grow. Colorado’s growth is projected to increase in the next few years, but that growth will slow considerably in the next two decades.

The state is beginning to feel the economic shock as a flood of new residents becomes no more than an average stream. Statewide, taxable sales in 2024 dollars, adjusted for inflation and population, declined 1.9% from $144.9 billion in 2023 to $142.1 billion in 2024. Among Colorado’s 64 counties, 38 (59.4%) experienced a decline in inflation and population-adjusted taxable sales from 2023 to 2024.

The state’s population hub looks sluggish compared with the national picture. When comparing retail sales growth from the end of 2024 through the first quarter of 2025, the Denver-Aurora-Centennial metro area had the third-lowest retail sales growth rate (it was actually a decline) across the reported 387 metro areas.

Employment isn’t doing much better when looking statewide. During the first quarter of 2025, Colorado’s job growth ranked 26th in the nation, the fruits of fewer movers and aging population.

The slowdown in new movers to Colorado underscores its homegrown population problem. Colorado simply isn’t producing its own people anymore. Colorado’s birth rate is falling at the nation’s third-fastest rate, according to a Common Sense Institute study, having fallen steadily since 2005.

Over time, this will have a multilayered impact on the state’s economy, depriving it of readymade workers and future workers.

Already, the school system — Colorado’s homegrown worker factory — is feeling the impacts of fewer children in its annual enrollment. Denver Public Schools, Douglas County Schools and Jefferson County Schools have each reported rounds of school closures amounting to dozens on the Front Range.

This trend will continue. Denver Public Schools predicts a loss of 8% of its student enrollment in the next three years — enough children to fill nearly 20 elementary schools.

Statewide, Colorado will shrink just over 15,000 children ages 0-17 — roughly the enrollment of Denver’s three largest high schools and exactly the number of future nurses, engineers, computer scientists and project managers Colorado won’t have in the future.

This shortage of homegrown Coloradans is going to exacerbate another encroaching problem — Colorado is no longer a place for the young. In 2025, the median age in Colorado is 39, which is about equal to the national average.

What isn’t average, however, is the rate at which Colorado’s median age is set to rise. Colorado’s 65+ population grew at the second-fastest rate in the nation from 2010 to 2020. By 2030, 19% of Colorado’s population will be retirement-aged. That’s about 40,000 retirees every year starting in 2030. By 2050, there will be close to a million households of retirees.

Between the two trends, Colorado will have more people in need of support and fewer working-age people to offer it — apart from the stress on the housing supply, labor market, and health care industry that comes with an aging population.

There is no way out of this except to make Colorado what it was in the past — an attractive place to live, play and work. Without another population boom, the state’s organic demographic trends will eat into its economic competitiveness like slow rust.

This is a statewide problem most clearly illustrated by its most populated area. All regions in Colorado exhibit significant and sharp declines in net migration relative to levels observed a decade ago. While all geographies examined show reductions, the Denver metro stands out with the steepest percentage decline, signaling deeper structural challenges concentrated in the state’s urban core.

Colorado is getting a preview of what’s to come if the new status quo continues. These migration trends carry significant economic weight: a shrinking inflow of new residents can limit labor force growth, dampen housing demand and reduce overall economic dynamism — particularly in sectors reliant on a growing and mobile population.

Problems in the Denver metro could give some hints about what needs to change the most. The disproportionate decline in Denver metro suggests that urban-specific pressures such as housing affordability, shifting lifestyle preferences and perceptions of livability might be playing a greater role than in surrounding areas. State and local policymakers will need to closely monitor these trends and address the root causes driving out-migration.

Colorado is not entering its 150th anniversary with the same vigor it developed in the 2000s and 2010s, a vigor borne by a new swath of workers and entrepreneurs from other states. Chart-topping economic growth was built on the back of chart-topping population growth. To stay competitive, Colorado’s performance in the coming years will be critical.

It is more imperative by the year that the state embraces free enterprise principles to attract more residents and help employers thrive.

Kelly Caufield is the executive director of the Common Sense Institute.