This was a rough week for some of the nation’s larger technology companies — or, should we say, their workers. Ride-sharing company Lyft said it’s cutting 13% of its staff, or another 700 jobs. Payment processor Stripe cut 14%, or 1,120 jobs. Amazon put a hold on hiring its corporate workforce. 

And then, of course, there’s Twitter. New owner Elon Musk began laying off 50% of Twitter’s 7,500 employees Friday as he sought to get the company to profitability. The aftermath isn’t clear, but Twitter became a force in Colorado in 2014 when it acquired Boulder social-data startup Gnip. 

Elaine Reddy, who worked at Gnip and Twitter during the acquisition and now handles communications at climate and sustainability consultant The AdHoc Group, shared her sympathy — and job possibilities (a thread): “Thinking about all of my former Gnip/Twitter co-workers and the absolute chaos this year has been + 2 years of a pandemic. Happy to help anyone who wants to make a move into climate tech.”

Should local and national Twitter employees be searching for a new job, Colorado’s professional community appears ready to welcome them. With an estimated 222,000 job openings in August, that’s up from a year-ago August though down from July, according to the latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Colorado had a 7.2% job opening rate, which is essentially the number of job openings compared to employment. We were in a four-way tie for eighth highest rate of job openings in the U.S.

While Colorado has had one of the faster pandemic job-recovery rates nationwide, that growth is slowing. That came up Friday at the online State Demography Summit, which also shared what else is slowing: Colorado’s population growth.

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