GONNA NEED MORE IMMIGRANTS:

WalletHub assembled rankings from 29 different categories to devise its ultimate scores for the 50 states. They were sorted into two main subcategories, "economic environment," where Colorado was only 19th best, and "job market," where Colorado finished first. [...]

The forecast noted that the state is still seeing strong employment growth, but the lack of workers could begin to drag on the state's economy. [...]

WalletHub reached out to experts in the field of employment to provide more context to their findings. They asked Bruce Sacerdote, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College, what the government could do to encourage manufacturing growth in the years to come.

"The corporate tax cuts are a sensible way to stimulate business investment," Sacerdote said. "But the onshoring of manufacturing will look quite different than the manufacturing jobs that left. Coal mining is also heavily subject to substitution of sophisticated capital equipment to save labor. But given the greener and cleaner ways to produce energy [including fracked natural gas], perhaps we should not have policies to encourage additional coal production."

Sacerdote also suggested that there was no particular reason to expect that the strong growth in jobs in Colorado and nationwide is necessarily going to come to an end in the near term.

"Expansions do not die of old age," he said. "There is still ample room for labor force participation to grow. I am looking forward to at least another couple of years of robust job growth, but my random guess is no better than anyone else's."

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