The Local newsletter is your free, daily guide to life in Colorado. For locals, by locals. Sign up today!
If you’re making less money than you were in 2008, you’re not alone. The annual personal income for the Denver area in 2009 was $45,982 per person, notes the Denver Business Journal. That’s down 4.2 percent from a year earlier, markedly worse than the national decline of 2.8 percent. Still, the average per-person income in Denver is better than the national average of $40,757.
But jobs, of course, have been hard to find—even for teens looking for summer work. More than 26 percent of the teens who want to find work are unemployed, according to 9News.
Times are particularly tough for those without full health insurance coverage who are “overwhelming community clinics” in the city, writes The Denver Post, which quotes a doctor admitting that some patients can end up on a waiting list with 3,500 names “even if they are dying of something.”
The patients in the worst situations aren’t those who have a traumatic incident, such as an accident or heart attack, but those who need follow-up care for conditions such as diabetes or heart disease.