Elizabeth Garner: Influence In Numbers

[00:00:00] Hi, I'm Katie Kramer, President and CEO of the Boettcher Foundation. Welcome to Colorado Leadership Stories, where we talk to everyday courageous leaders who have made transformational impacts in their communities and are building a better state for everyone.

[00:00:18] You'll hear from leaders and organizations and communities throughout the state as we explore the idea that leadership is an activity that anyone can do. Population growth throughout the state of Colorado has varied over the last decade. There are demographic,

[00:00:39] economic and political shifts taking place that will slow growth in the US and in Colorado. With us today is the State Demographer Elizabeth Garner who joined the Colorado Department of Local Affairs in 2004.

[00:00:51] Elizabeth has over 20 years of experience analyzing population and economic trends in the state. The State Demography Office produces population and economic estimates and forecasts for use by the state agencies and local governments. Its current areas of research include aging in Colorado, characteristics of migration and poverty.

[00:01:10] Elizabeth is an economist who received her BA in business at the University of San Diego and her master's degree in Agricultural and Resource Economics at Colorado State University. Welcome, Elizabeth. Thanks so much for having me.

[00:01:23] We're excited to talk to you. It's so much fun hearing you speak all over the place, whether it's to foundations or in different contexts. And so it's fun to have some one on one time and

[00:01:33] learn a little bit more about you and your leadership journey. I know you're a Colorado kid like me and a Denver native. You're a graduate of Thomas Jefferson High School, something only now 43% of the Colorado's current population can claim.

[00:01:47] So I want to tell us more about your story and your path to becoming the State Demographer.

[00:01:53] Well, first I'll say that I had never planned on being the State Demographer. That's not like one of those goals that I had growing up. But again, born and raised in Denver. Went then to University of San Diego for my undergraduate degree. It was in business.

[00:02:07] And I really had planned on doing kind of economic development was my goal at that point to do with my life. And I'd gone straight then into the Peace Corps.

[00:02:16] And I'll be honest, that was probably the best thing I've ever done. And it was in economic development that I was working in hands on local level.

[00:02:27] Really got me into the area of international development. And again, that had been my plan was to go back into international development. Came back to the United States after I was done and got a job with the Small Business Administration.

[00:02:45] Again, in the area of business development, economic development, and then decided I needed my graduate degree. And went to CSU. They have a great program in applied economics. And that's where then my direction changed. I started working on different projects that were looking specifically at Colorado.

[00:03:04] So they were looking at like the impact of agriculture to Colorado's economy. Looking at the cost of living indices in Colorado. And I really then fell in love with Colorado. Not that I wasn't in love with Colorado to begin with.

[00:03:19] But that's where then I started running a data center at CSU all with different kinds of demographic, economic, social information. I ended up doing work then with the State Demography Office at that time. This job opened. And I took it.

[00:03:39] And the rest is history, right? 20 years this year. 20 years this year. That's amazing. Amazing. Lots of presentations I've heard you do over the years. Very fun. Well, who were your role models growing up? You know, so certainly my parents were big role models to begin with.

[00:03:57] Both very, very strong push in education and global awareness, which is probably why I was interested in the international development component.

[00:04:07] Very aware of what was going on civically and always engaged. What was going on in our community. So I think their interest in always what was going on drove me to be very interested in what was going on.

[00:04:22] Also had some other really strong women relatives in my life that kind of pushed them. Doesn't matter. You know, back when I was growing up, it wasn't as gender equal. Not that it's perfectly gender equal now, but it really wasn't, you know, kind of in the 80s as much.

[00:04:40] And very strong role models pushing, you know, women can do anything kind of deal. And certainly in economics, there weren't a lot of women, especially in my program. But that was fine because, you know, I had the support and I was fine in that area.

[00:04:57] But then after that, I would say I take nuggets from almost everyone I meet. You know, like you meet someone and they tell you about what they're doing or a philosophy they have. And you're like, ooh, I like that one.

[00:05:11] And so I think that that's really when I'm looking at role models now for me is like, I almost society has so many great ones that I leverage nuggets from a lot of people.

[00:05:24] I do that, too. I'm a I'm a quote keeper. Yeah. Yeah. Gravars some inspiration here and there. Well, and I know that you're the type of person that's a great mentor for others. And so I'm just curious how you approach mentorship today.

[00:05:39] Well, it's funny thinking about it because I don't necessarily see myself as a mentor. But what I do try and push is kind of experiential learning.

[00:05:52] Sometimes I think you remember the best and learn the best from doing it yourself. And so certainly over the years, we've had different staff and they'll come in and they'll say, oh, but what about this way?

[00:06:05] And I'm like, all right, try it. Let me let me see if that works for you. But with the support, not like pushing it down with the support of hey, maybe it would work better.

[00:06:15] So I do think that it's important for people to try things and see if it works. And I also then push, you know, repetition is the other piece that I I use.

[00:06:27] There's a lot of nuggets that I've taken that I think are really important in our job area. Like listening. And so almost every staff meeting, I will bring it up. Remember to listen. God gave you two ears, one mouth.

[00:06:46] Helping people identify questions, like helping them pinpoint what is the question? What are you trying to answer? So repetition on one side of just like these important takeaways, right, is one side plus the other side is like, hey, go for it. Try and being super supportive.

[00:07:11] You know, whatever they're trying to do, but understanding the mission of our office and the mission. You know, I'd say most of the folks that I engage with are public servants and whether their local government or state government, just just remembering that.

[00:07:25] You know, we are at the mercy, not mercy, but you know, we're funded by taxpayer dollars. It's important that the people of Colorado understand what we do, why we're doing it. And that, you know, we're really looking out for the best of all Colorado.

[00:07:42] I love that. So many nuggets there takeaways, but you're teaching people how to fish right there. I love that analogy.

[00:07:49] And then gosh, if for leaders, if we would all listen a little more and then be clear on the problem we're trying to solve. So good, good stuff there.

[00:07:58] Well, I want to talk about what your day looks like. I mean, what does the state demographer do? You get up, you have your coffee, a little breakfast and then tell us what happens. Oh, it right now it is such a series of emails.

[00:08:16] Emails and meetings benefit drawback right of COVID. Right. Is that now you can put so many more meetings in a day than you could before because now you're not traveling to as many. You can just click a button and there you go.

[00:08:30] But I do, I do like the access of being able to have virtual meetings because I do think it makes us more efficient. We can do a lot more.

[00:08:39] But then the best part of my day is really either working on problems or traveling to different parts of the state and giving presentations. I will tell you,

[00:08:50] I didn't start off loving giving presentations, but I do love now giving presentations because I think it's really important to share the information and to see the aha moments when people are listening. They're like, oh,

[00:09:05] that's why I was like, okay, perfect. That's exactly what I needed you to take away from it. You know, people aren't going to take away the big graphs and data that we present. But if they can get the nugget that it's supposed to illustrate, perfect.

[00:09:21] Right, right. You got that road warrior part of your job like I do too, and all over rural Colorado. What's some a memorable place that you've traveled to that you remember doing a presentation?

[00:09:33] You know, I will tell you that almost every place I go is memorable for different reasons. And people will often ask you to like, where's your favorite community? And that's just like asking who's your favorite child. Right. You know, every part of the state has its unique situations and

[00:09:50] challenges. But the best part is that people care, you know, and that's why I love what I do is because

[00:10:01] big picture, people are just trying to make their communities a better place. And they're needing the tools and some of the guidance, maybe some resources, some maybe sometimes validation for whatever work they're doing. And so many of them are wearing so many different hats always that they just need that extra bit of support. And sometimes they ask me to come in kind of as the bad guy. Because sometimes it's easier to hear it from somebody else.

[00:10:20] Rather than internally, or they like to have that external validation, right? Whatever project they're working on.

[00:10:25] Well, and that information is powerful as we're all trying to work towards a better Colorado. Right. And I just think about you being a Denver native, you've seen a lot of change in the way that you've been treated. And I think that's a really good thing.

[00:10:39] So it's kind of funny. In a way we haven't changed a ton. We tend to wear a young state, meaning people are more likely to be a little bit more of a young person than they are a lot of people. And so that's why I love what I do.

[00:10:54] So what's the story behind that? I think it's kind of interesting. I think it's interesting to see how you're going to tell us about who's living here today, and who should we look for in the future?

[00:11:06] We tend to wear a young state, meaning we've got young people that live here. So we are still young because we attract young adults. If we didn't attract young adults, we would get older faster.

[00:11:22] So one of the unique things about Colorado is that we're still young. We're the sixth youngest state. But we are going through a big transition in terms of we are becoming older pretty fast. We're the fourth fastest aging state, even though we're the sixth youngest.

[00:11:39] And it's because we've got this big group of baby boomers, and they are aging into that 65 plus, 75 plus age group, which we've never had before. It's really the baby boomers were our first big group of migrants to the state.

[00:11:53] Excuse me. And they really had an influence on the state unlike any other group because we didn't have older adults really beforehand when they moved here, they were in their 20s and 30s. This was 30 to 40 years ago.

[00:12:11] So now this age group really had a big influence on our labor force on wealth building in the state. And now they're aging into the 65 plus. So our future will be older, we are going to look more like the nation as a whole.

[00:12:27] Not totally like the nation because we're still attracting young adults. But this is a pretty big transition. The other big transition is that we are becoming more racially and ethnically diverse. Again, it has a big age spectrum to it.

[00:12:41] Our oldest population is not very diverse. Our young population, let's say under the age of 25, 35 is much more diverse. And then if you even go to like under five, it's the most diverse.

[00:12:54] And it's just going to take a lot of time for Colorado to become even more diverse. And we're not as diverse as like a lot of other states. So even though I keep talking about that we're becoming more diverse in that big overall spectrum, we're not super diverse.

[00:13:13] If that makes sense. It takes a little bit at a time.

[00:13:17] Right, right. Well doubling back to the aging population thing I wanted to ask about the impact of that on our workforce, housing, other social services. And I'm sure that information you're giving to people so they can make plans for all these changes.

[00:13:33] But what do you see for some of those impacts? So I mean, I think we really started to see it last decade and into this decade, but maybe didn't start feeling it this decade. So last decade we probably had around 500,000 people age out of the labor force.

[00:13:50] And not everybody ages out at 65. Some people leave at 75. Some people leave at 55, right? It's a phased approach that we take. But that had a huge impact on our demand for workers and tightening up of the labor force and needing people to move here to fill positions.

[00:14:10] This decade we've got another about 400,000 aging out of the labor force. This decade we've got the fastest growth in the 75 to 84 year old. So like last decade it was still fast growth but in the 65 to 74 which is still relatively young.

[00:14:26] This decade it is in that age group that tend to have more demands for services. Maybe tend to need more health services, maybe need help caring for their homes, definitely aging out of the labor force.

[00:14:42] So this is another big decade in terms of a big transition for Colorado relative to like what other states already have large share of older adults. Colorado's just starting to grow its share of older adults.

[00:14:59] Wow. Well and your office research touches all 14 of Colorado's industries and helps inform the planning in community and health services like we were just talking about. Also land and resource use, housing and in addition to the aging population.

[00:15:14] Which industries do you think we're going to have the most potential for growth based upon some of the trends?

[00:15:20] So it's what we end up doing in terms of our job forecast is we look at what's going on nationally. So it's not like Colorado is going to be completely uniquely different than the US as a whole. So we see what's growing nationally and then where does Colorado have kind of a comparative advantage?

[00:15:36] So definitely in this area of professional business services is one of Colorado's like bread and butter. It's like what we're doing really well right now. And it's still an industry that's growing nationally. So I think that that's going to be an area where Colorado continues to grow is in that what you would consider kind of advanced high service sector area.

[00:15:58] At the same time our population will drive job demand right? We as people that live here demand different services whether it's health services maybe it's going out and eating, maybe it's residential like housing services. So we're still going to see that demand on the health service side and probably still start to see you know continue to see demand for jobs in that area.

[00:16:22] As well as what you would see just from your resident population. So you know a leisure and hospitality retail will all still be in that demand as well as construction.

[00:16:34] And you're giving over 100 presentations throughout the state every year. I wonder what the most common question you get asked is.

[00:16:43] So I will say last decade it was more how did marijuana influence this growth? Oh interesting. Everyone. That one has started to phase out but one of the first ones really is do we need to grow?

[00:16:58] The other big question is what about water? So really related to growth and why we need it and do we have the capacity to manage it. And the resources to accommodate it. So I think you know they're good questions.

[00:17:17] And you know with the question related to do we need growth. It is a funny you know I'm titling most of my presentations if then right now because we know one there's a whole bunch of uncertainty and two we know that there's lots of choices.

[00:17:34] That different communities can make different choices on how they want to grow if they want to grow what types of jobs they want to grow.

[00:17:44] And if you make a certain choice then you have a certain outcome. But one of the things that is pretty certain right now is that we've got a big transition. We are over 50 percent of our growth this next decade is in the population over the age of 65.

[00:18:03] So we're forecasting about 600,000 in growth over 300,000 growth in our 65 plus. It's not from migration it is from Coloradoans aging into that 65 plus most of them will start to retire age in place and so we will need people to come in and fill those positions or we will need to learn how to do with less.

[00:18:33] And it would be fine if we had a perfectly normal distribution or average distribution of people but we don't. We have more people aging out of the labor force than we have people aging in. Meaning we're going to need more people to keep we're going to need to have continue people moving to the state.

[00:18:55] If we want to grow jobs and if we want to replace people that are leaving. Right. That's a lot to think about some really smart people working on on those challenges. Elizabeth what do you love most and least about your job.

[00:19:12] I will tell you that every day is a new challenge like we get new questions and so it fits my personality in terms of like I get driven by the concept of research like studying trying to find out things and service.

[00:19:28] So this job is a perfect meld of research and service. But I will tell you like I said before you know the reason I keep coming back is because I get to meet some great people in the state and work with great people in the state.

[00:19:43] You know I have not any met any buddy that's evil right. Everybody is really trying to do their best and they're trying to find the best data and information right to do it.

[00:19:55] That's great and wonderful to hear speaking of that data and information I also wonder if there's a nugget that is would surprise people about Colorado. So you know this is the area for I think we just need to communicate more and better with media.

[00:20:18] Media tends to say all the time oh all of this exponential growth to the state and I'm like no not true. We are slowing down and there's a lot of people that have heard it and now and are actually starting to see it and they know that our labor force is really tight.

[00:20:33] So I but I think that that is the one nugget that people don't understand is that we are slowing down and that the whole US is slowing down.

[00:20:44] And so being able to attract and retain and I'm saying both sides attract retain the best and the brightest is going to get harder right.

[00:20:53] And I don't think people realize that. I think people are like oh everybody will just come to Colorado. It's like no we have seen actually in the data that that's not the case.

[00:21:02] The second piece is that I think most people assume that all of our growth comes from migration. I was like no no no no no we've got this thing called births and it's actually the largest component of our population change.

[00:21:18] So we've got about sixty two thousand births a year and about twenty thousand in net migration. Now we've got this other piece that's deaths which is about forty five thousand. So you take typically the math works as births minus deaths as natural increase and then it's net migration.

[00:21:38] We typically demonstrate the data is births minus deaths which I think is a mistake on our part. I think it's important to show that births really when we say all right Colorado grew by thirty five thousand people the largest number of that are our births.

[00:21:54] And they're not scary right. They're not driving on our roads or not buying our homes. They're you know pretty innocent. They're riding the bikes in the cul-de-sacs. They're the little kids. There's the little guys.

[00:22:08] So I think that that's some of the big pieces that a lot of times people just don't get right. What's driving Colorado. Clearly that was really interesting.

[00:22:20] So if someone's interested in learning more about all of these your office's research or are all these things is that on the website or where would you tell them to look.

[00:22:28] Yeah so our website is a great place to start and you can just Google like Colorado demography and we're in that top group because really no one else wants that URL. You can become part of our monthly newsletter.

[00:22:42] And we sent out tidbits of what's going on. Definitely check out our website. We've got a gazillion resources. We have data tables if you like tables. We've put together visualizations. We also have a conference at the end of the year.

[00:22:58] You can sign up to get on the newsletter to get and learn more about that. We do webinars throughout the year. So there's lots of great ways to end up learning about what's happening in Colorado.

[00:23:09] Right. Well and I have seen you do lots of those presentations so people can like sign up for those you know because it's part of like a grant maker group or an education based group or something.

[00:23:20] But you do that just for the general population. Yeah we do webinars. We do recorded webinars. Again our goal is to try and make this information accessible. Right. Well thank you for that. It's a great service that you do. Thank you. Good information to make good decisions from.

[00:23:36] Yep. Thank you. Yes. Well you've survived and we have four lightning round questions. And so this is always fun for to ask a Colorado native to about some of these things. But what's your favorite Colorado hobby.

[00:23:49] So I'm a big skier hiker camper and then gardening but I think you can garden anywhere that hiking skiing camping are big ones for me for sure in the state. OK. Favorite Colorado landmark.

[00:24:01] So totally unfair right. But there is nothing better than driving down the highway and seeing Pikes Peak covered in snow with a big blue sky. Close second is Red Rocks.

[00:24:16] Yes indeed. The other Vista I like is driving coming right over Highway 36 and into Boulder and you see the flat on the left side. Oh great one. It's good. Good good good. What a beautiful place we live in. All right. What action hero do you most identify with.

[00:24:31] So I have no idea. I don't I don't I don't identify with an action hero one. I don't really seek danger or excitement or anything like that and I'm pretty much a chicken. So there you go chicken little.

[00:24:49] Oh man. All right. And then what are you currently binging like is there a show a book or a podcast or something that you're just consuming right now that's either inspires you or waste wonder a lot of time and is relaxing.

[00:25:00] So I have been binging the crown and it does. It's a great just release right. You just put your mind somewhere else. Then I did watch true I binge True Detectives latest season and then I'm like oh my goodness I'm going to have to watch the other ones.

[00:25:21] So that's my next goal is to watch the the next set.

[00:25:25] Love it. Love it. Well Elizabeth thanks for coming in we really appreciate getting to know you as a leader and a Coloradan but also the great work you do at the State Demographers Office so thank you very much.

[00:25:35] Oh thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. Thank you for joining Colorado Leadership Stories where we hope to inspire the next generation of Colorado community builders, doers and difference makers. Colorado Leadership Stories is presented by the Betcher Foundation.

[00:25:53] The Betcher Foundation supports Colorado by empowering leaders and communities with tools to tackle challenges and pursue opportunities, building a better state for everyone. With an 85 plus year legacy of giving back, we're committed to amplifying our impact for future generations. That's the spirit of Betcher.