Part of an ongoing series tracking the El Paso County economy from primary public records.
Between 2014 and 2025, five private sectors in El Paso County saw their average real wage go nowhere or backward. Those five sectors employ 76,332 people, 30.1 percent of all private jobs in the county.
The largest of them is health care. Health Care and Social Assistance is the biggest private employer in El Paso County at 45,459 workers, 17.9 percent of private employment. Its average weekly wage in constant 2024 dollars was $1,164 in 2014. In 2025 it was $1,187. Eleven years, twenty three dollars a week.
Everything in this piece is private sector only. That is not a footnote in this county. Fort Carson, Peterson Space Force Base, Schriever Space Force Base, and the Air Force Academy are all excluded, along with every other public employer, because the underlying series covers private ownership only. In a region this dependent on federal payrolls, that is a very large hole, and every number below should be read as "private El Paso County" rather than "El Paso County."
The sectors that stood still
Here is every labeled private sector in the county, ranked by real wage change from 2014 to 2025. All figures are constant 2024 dollars.
| Sector | 2014 | 2025 | Change/wk | Percent | 2025 jobs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Management of Companies and Enterprises | $2,898 | $4,873 | +$1,976 | +68.2% | 2,534 |
| Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting | $600 | $821 | +$221 | +36.8% | 483 |
| Accommodation and Food Services | $457 | $577 | +$121 | +26.4% | 32,788 |
| Finance and Insurance | $1,552 | $1,879 | +$327 | +21.1% | 13,103 |
| Utilities | $2,393 | $2,878 | +$485 | +20.3% | 482 |
| Real Estate and Rental and Leasing | $992 | $1,182 | +$190 | +19.1% | 4,985 |
| Administrative and Support and Waste Management | $924 | $1,050 | +$126 | +13.7% | 15,589 |
| Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation | $505 | $570 | +$65 | +12.9% | 5,970 |
| Construction | $1,264 | $1,404 | +$140 | +11.1% | 17,023 |
| Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction | $1,897 | $2,063 | +$165 | +8.7% | 45 |
| Retail Trade | $739 | $799 | +$59 | +8.0% | 31,727 |
| Other Services (except Public Administration) | $1,030 | $1,108 | +$78 | +7.6% | 12,170 |
| Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services | $2,197 | $2,320 | +$123 | +5.6% | 33,950 |
| Wholesale Trade | $1,637 | $1,716 | +$79 | +4.8% | 6,772 |
| Health Care and Social Assistance | $1,164 | $1,187 | +$23 | +1.9% | 45,459 |
| Information | $2,022 | $2,056 | +$34 | +1.7% | 4,739 |
| Manufacturing | $1,576 | $1,530 | -$46 | -2.9% | 11,537 |
| Transportation and Warehousing | $1,035 | $948 | -$88 | -8.5% | 9,932 |
| Educational Services | $985 | $868 | -$117 | -11.9% | 4,666 |
Three sectors lost real ground outright. Private Educational Services, meaning private schools, tutoring, and training, fell 11.9 percent. Transportation and Warehousing fell 8.5 percent. Manufacturing fell 2.9 percent. Together they employ 26,135 people, 10.3 percent of private jobs.
Add health care at plus 1.9 percent and Information at plus 1.7 percent, both close enough to zero that eleven years of change disappears into rounding, and you get the 76,332 figure. Nearly a third of the county's private workforce is in a sector where the average paycheck bought about the same in 2025 as it did in 2014.
The spread statistic that points the wrong way
The obvious way to measure wage inequality across sectors is to divide the highest-paying sector by the lowest-paying one. Do that here and you get a clean, alarming story.
| Year | Top sector | Weekly | Bottom sector | Weekly | Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | Management of Companies | $2,898 | Accommodation and Food | $457 | 6.35 |
| 2015 | Management of Companies | $3,277 | Accommodation and Food | $471 | 6.96 |
| 2016 | Management of Companies | $3,671 | Accommodation and Food | $473 | 7.75 |
| 2017 | Management of Companies | $4,412 | Accommodation and Food | $487 | 9.07 |
| 2018 | Management of Companies | $4,543 | Accommodation and Food | $497 | 9.14 |
| 2019 | Management of Companies | $4,749 | Accommodation and Food | $508 | 9.34 |
| 2020 | Management of Companies | $4,266 | Accommodation and Food | $516 | 8.26 |
| 2021 | Management of Companies | $4,576 | Accommodation and Food | $555 | 8.24 |
| 2022 | Management of Companies | $3,833 | Accommodation and Food | $560 | 6.84 |
| 2023 | Management of Companies | $3,865 | Arts, Entertainment, Rec | $560 | 6.90 |
| 2024 | Management of Companies | $4,238 | Arts, Entertainment, Rec | $558 | 7.59 |
| 2025 | Management of Companies | $4,873 | Arts, Entertainment, Rec | $570 | 8.54 |
6.35 to 8.54. Widening, and by a lot. That number is real arithmetic and it is close to useless, and I want to be careful here: the max-over-min ratio of 8.54 should never be quoted without the headcount-weighted ratio of 4.02 sitting next to it, because the two point in opposite directions and only one of them describes what workers experience.
The entire upward move in that table belongs to one sector. NAICS 55, Management of Companies and Enterprises, is the top row in every single year, and its real wage rose 68.2 percent while no other sector in the county rose more than 36.8 percent. It employs 2,534 people, 1.0 percent of private employment.
It is also not what the name suggests. Management of Companies and Enterprises is holding companies and corporate head offices, not managers generally. Its pay is bonus and equity driven, it swings 30 percent from quarter to quarter, and it fell from $4,749 in 2019 to $3,833 in 2022 before climbing back to $4,873. A single corporate headquarters moving into or out of the county moves this series.
Take that one sector out and the trend disappears:
| Measure | 2014 | 2025 | Direction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Max/min ratio, all 19 sectors | 6.35 | 8.54 | widening |
| Max/min ratio, excluding NAICS 55 | 5.24 | 5.05 | flat |
Removing NAICS 55 also exposes how fragile the top of this statistic is. Without it, the highest-paying sector in the county becomes Utilities (482 workers) in six of the twelve years and Mining (45 workers) in the other five. A 45-employee sector should not be allowed to define a county's wage ceiling in print.
Weight it by people, and the spread narrows
The honest version of this measurement asks what the wage distribution looks like from where workers actually stand. Line up all 253,953 private jobs in the county from lowest-paying sector to highest, then read off the wage at the 10th and 90th percentile of workers.
| Year | p10 | p50 | p90 | p90/p10 | Weighted avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | $457 | $1,035 | $2,197 | 4.81 | $1,173 |
| 2015 | $471 | $1,055 | $2,216 | 4.71 | $1,189 |
| 2016 | $473 | $1,060 | $2,189 | 4.62 | $1,180 |
| 2017 | $487 | $1,069 | $2,179 | 4.48 | $1,192 |
| 2018 | $497 | $1,100 | $2,181 | 4.39 | $1,184 |
| 2019 | $508 | $1,101 | $2,220 | 4.37 | $1,200 |
| 2020 | $516 | $1,153 | $2,262 | 4.38 | $1,277 |
| 2021 | $555 | $1,157 | $2,324 | 4.19 | $1,290 |
| 2022 | $560 | $1,152 | $2,273 | 4.06 | $1,258 |
| 2023 | $567 | $1,173 | $2,339 | 4.12 | $1,268 |
| 2024 | $568 | $1,168 | $2,284 | 4.02 | $1,275 |
| 2025 | $577 | $1,187 | $2,320 | 4.02 | $1,305 |
4.81 down to 4.02, falling in eight of the eleven year-over-year steps, with no reversal larger than 0.07. The headcount-weighted spread narrowed.
That narrowing is not a trick of composition. The sector sitting at the 10th percentile of workers is Accommodation and Food Services in both 2014 and 2025, and the sector at the 90th percentile is Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services in both years. Same two sectors at both ends of the ruler, eleven years apart. They moved closer together.
The compression is not good news
Here is the part that matters more than the direction of the ratio.
The gap closed because the top stopped moving, not because the bottom caught up in any meaningful sense. Accommodation and Food Services rose 26.4 percent in real terms, the third-largest gain of any sector, and it still pays $577 a week. That is roughly $30,000 a year. Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services, the sector at the 90th percentile, rose 5.6 percent across the same eleven years.
Both of those things are true at once. The lowest-paid large sector in the county got a real raise, from a floor so low that a 26 percent gain still lands at thirty thousand dollars. The high-wage sector that anchors the top of the distribution gained about half a percent a year. A spread that closes this way is a description of stagnation at the top, not mobility at the bottom.
Colorado's state minimum wage rose from $8.00 in 2014 to $14.81 in 2025, and that is the explanation everyone reaches for regarding the Accommodation and Food gain. It fits the shape of the data. This analysis contains no evidence for it, tests nothing about it, and I am not asserting it. It is the next question, not this piece's answer.
One more limit on all of this, and it is a real one. QCEW reports a single average wage per sector. That means every number here is about the gap between sectors, and nothing here measures the gap within one. Health Care and Social Assistance at $1,187 a week is surgeons and home health aides averaged into one figure. When the p90/p10 ratio compresses from 4.81 to 4.02, what compressed is the distance between sector averages. It is not a statement that individual workers' wages converged, and most US wage dispersion lives inside sectors rather than between them.
What the county actually pays
The 2025 snapshot, restricted to sectors employing more than 1 percent of private workers so that a 45-person industry cannot set the top or bottom of the range.
| Sector | Weekly (real 2024) | Annualized | Jobs | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services | $2,320 | $120,630 | 33,950 | 13.4% |
| Information | $2,056 | $106,928 | 4,739 | 1.9% |
| Finance and Insurance | $1,879 | $97,721 | 13,103 | 5.2% |
| Wholesale Trade | $1,716 | $89,240 | 6,772 | 2.7% |
| Manufacturing | $1,530 | $79,562 | 11,537 | 4.5% |
| Construction | $1,404 | $73,008 | 17,023 | 6.7% |
| Health Care and Social Assistance | $1,187 | $61,715 | 45,459 | 17.9% |
| Real Estate and Rental and Leasing | $1,182 | $61,458 | 4,985 | 2.0% |
| Other Services (except Public Administration) | $1,108 | $57,635 | 12,170 | 4.8% |
| Administrative and Support and Waste Management | $1,050 | $54,593 | 15,589 | 6.1% |
| Transportation and Warehousing | $948 | $49,285 | 9,932 | 3.9% |
| Educational Services | $868 | $45,114 | 4,666 | 1.8% |
| Retail Trade | $799 | $41,534 | 31,727 | 12.5% |
| Accommodation and Food Services | $577 | $30,016 | 32,788 | 12.9% |
| Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation | $570 | $29,657 | 5,970 | 2.4% |
Top to bottom, that is $2,320 against $570, a spread of $1,750 a week and a ratio of 4.07 to 1.
The 1 percent employment floor is doing necessary work in that table. Unfiltered, Mining ranks fourth in the county at $2,063 a week on 45 employees, and Utilities ranks second at $2,878 on 482. Both facts are technically correct and neither belongs in a sentence about what Colorado Springs pays.
Two numbers finish the picture. The employment-weighted average private wage in 2025 was $1,305 a week. The plain average across the 19 sectors, giving Mining's 45 workers the same vote as health care's 45,459, was $1,570. The unweighted figure overstates the typical private paycheck by $265 a week, about 20 percent.
And only 35.5 percent of private workers are employed in a sector paying at or above that weighted county average. Roughly two out of three private workers in El Paso County are in a sector that pays below the county's own average private wage. The three largest sectors hold 44.2 percent of private jobs between them: Health Care at $1,187, Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services at $2,320, and Accommodation and Food Services at $577. Only one of the three pays above average.
What I take from it
The wage spread question has a satisfying answer and a useful one, and they are not the same answer.
The satisfying answer is 8.54 to 1 and rising, which is a headline. The useful answer is 4.02 to 1 and falling, which is a slow compression driven by the top half going quiet. Underneath both of them sits the number I would actually put in front of a county commissioner: 76,332 private workers, 30.1 percent of the private base, in sectors where the real wage has not moved in eleven years, including the single largest private employer in the county.
That is a different problem than inequality, and it is a harder one. A widening gap has an obvious lever. A workforce concentrated in sectors that pay the same in real terms as they did in 2014 does not.
Data and Methodology
All figures come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages for El Paso County, Colorado (area FIPS 08041), loaded into a local analytical database. The scope is private ownership (own_code 5) at the two-digit NAICS sector level (aggregation level 74), covering 2014 Q1 through 2025 Q4. Quarters roll up to calendar years the way BLS does it: annual total wages summed across the four quarters, average annual employment taken as the mean of the twelve monthly employment levels, weekly wage computed as annual wages divided by average employment divided by 52. That method reproduces the BLS published average weekly wage column to the rounding digit at quarter level.
All wages are stated in constant 2024 dollars, deflated by the BLS Denver-Aurora-Lakewood CPI-U, all items. Nominal figures are higher; the 2025 nominal equivalents of the real wages above run about 3 percent above the real numbers.
Because this is private ownership only, all military and civilian federal employment at Fort Carson, Peterson Space Force Base, Schriever Space Force Base, and the Air Force Academy is excluded, as is state, county, and municipal employment. QCEW also covers only unemployment-insurance-covered jobs, so the self-employed, most independent contractors, and gig workers do not appear. In a county with heavy construction and services activity, that exclusion falls hardest at the low-wage end, which means the true bottom of this distribution is probably worse than $577 a week rather than better.
The panel is complete. The query returns 960 rows, 20 industry codes across 48 quarters, with no missing quarters and zero rows carrying a disclosure suppression code in either the disclosure or location-quotient disclosure field. The 19 labeled sectors reconcile exactly to the independently published county private total at aggregation level 71, to the dollar and to the person, in both 2014 (201,873 jobs) and 2025 (254,025 jobs). The only industry code with no NAICS label is 99, Unclassified, 72 workers, which is an administrative residual rather than a sector and is excluded from every ranking here.
Two quarters, 2024 Q4 and 2025 Q1, carry Colorado's reporting gap flag from the state's unemployment insurance system modernization. Unlike an earlier brief in this series, which dropped flagged quarters, this analysis keeps them, for a specific reason: those two quarters are exactly the bonus quarters, so deleting one and rebuilding the year mechanically depresses bonus-driven sectors for reasons unrelated to the data break. The valid test is a like-quarter year-over-year comparison, which cancels seasonality and asks whether the flagged quarter moved differently from its unflagged siblings in the same year. Median absolute divergence was 3.3 percentage points for 2024 Q4 and 3.1 percentage points for 2025 Q1, across 19 sectors. That is ordinary quarter-to-quarter noise, and the two worst offenders in both tests are the sectors that are noisy in every year regardless of flag: Mining, where 45 employees means a few hires swings the average, and Management of Companies, which is bonus driven. The flagged quarters do not change any conclusion in this piece. The central compression finding runs from 4.81 in 2014 to 4.12 in 2023, entirely before the first flagged quarter exists.
Two smaller caveats travel with these numbers. The CPI series is missing one month of 2025, so the 2025 annual average is an eleven-month mean; correcting it moves every 2025 real wage by less than one tenth of one percent, about 43 cents on a $577 weekly wage. And 2025 Q4 is recent enough that BLS may still restate it. Figures are reproducible from the public record and will be revisited as later quarters settle.