PHILL FOSTER AND COMPANY

Colorado saw 23,320 new businesses filings submitted to the secretary of state's office in the fourth quarter, down from 27,640 in the third quarter, but Q3 numbers were boosted by a "fee holiday."

Across all of 2014, the state saw 102,127 new business filings, up 13.8 percent from 2013.

That's according to a quarterly business-indicators report from the Business Research Division at the University of Colorado Boulder's Leeds School of Business, draws on data from the secretary of state's central business registry. The report was released Thursday by new Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams.

The report noted that a fee holiday for filings, implemented in summer 2014 by former Secretary of State Scott Gessler, ended in October. The fee break helped to boost third-quarter filings.

"The end of the business filing fee holiday resulted in a small decrease in new entity formation compared to the third quarter," Williams. "But the larger trend is that Coloradans continue to put their ideas into the marketplace and grow our economy."

The report says that, based on the long-term trend of growth in new-business creation, Colorado employment is projected to continue its recent expansion through the first half of 2015. That's based on research showing a strong link between new entity filings and total employment.

"As a state, Colorado has done well creating jobs, but wage growth remains the missing component in this recovery," said Richard Wobbekind, an economist and executive director of CU-Boulder's Business Research Division.

As for "entity renewal" filings by existing businesses, they totaled 107,848 in the fourth quarter, up 5.5 percent from Q4 2013, the report said.

At the end of 2014, Colorado had 570,093 registered businesses, up 2.8 percent from the third quarter of 2014 and up 8.5 percent increase from the end of 2013.

Contact us for your entire real estate needs at:

http://phillfosterco.com/denver-contact