One of Boulder County’s critical economic engines is in danger of lurching to a sudden stop on Friday as thousands of employees at the area’s federal research labs face the prospect of being told to stay home due to a looming federal shutdown sparked by a congressional impasse over immigration.
“There’s over 3,000 employees in Boulder County specifically who work for federal research labs, and so a continuing resolution, or in this case a shutdown, could have an impact on literally thousands of employees within the city of Boulder and more broadly the county,” said Dan Powers, executive director of CO-LABS, a Boulder-based consortium that educates the public about the value of science research in Colorado.
Federally funded research facilities in Boulder and the rest of the state contributed roughly $2.6 billion to Colorado’s economy in 2016, and supported more than 17,600 jobs, according to a report compiled by the University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business and published last year by CO-LABS.
The 2017 CO-LABS report showed that in fiscal 2015, the $1.1 billion in Boulder County economic activity supported 7,627 jobs.
With annual budgets totaling an estimated $606 million in fiscal ’15, the largest lab expenditure was on labor — 3,883 full-time, part-time, student and contract lab workers.