SandBox Comments: Aspen Daily News "Fewer local tourism jobs than in 2000"

Or, maybe Lee Mulcahy doesn't have to build his own public stocks and place himself into them after all.

Maybe PitCo commissioners will lend a hand by retaining an intensive study into  'why' Aspen and Pitkin County are sliding so noticeably over the past decade from one of the most affluent and thriving on multiple levels counties in the nation to:

 Andrew Travers:

"The travel and tourism piece is something that you do very well,” Ben Alexander, an economist from the Montana-based Headwaters Institute told the county commissioners by phone Wednesday. “But it’s something you haven’t grown in in some time — and that’s surprising to me.”

Commissioners noted that growth in jobs and the overall economy was fast paced here through the first two-thirds of the last decade, but quickly fell off with the recession.

The institute’s report, based largely on 2010 census data, found that travel and tourism jobs make up 53 percent of employment in the county, or roughly 8,700 jobs. But that number has declined by 560 jobs since 2000, Alexander found.

“To me the big story is that travel and tourism have not been a job creator for you over the last decade,” he said. “Travel and tourism has been a source of job loss.”

Over the same period, retail jobs shrank by 10 percent, from 912 to 819. Hotel and food services likewise shrank from 5,421 to 4,556 jobs — a 16 percent decrease.

However, jobs categorized in arts, entertainment and recreation grew from 2,728 to 3,148 here — a 15 percent increase, owing largely to ski- and sports-related business. That sector, Alexander reported, was the only part of the local economy that continued creating jobs through the onset of the recession in 2008 and 2009, when employment went up by 85 jobs.

Less surprising to county officials was that economic growth in the county was more gradual here over the go-go 2000s than in other ski resorts, owing largely to strict local land-use codes..." 
(Read more?  Click title)

Here's to the little guy.

Let freedom ring.

"Unapologetically pursuing and tracking patterns within the news others make since 2010."