During the late 1880s, Colorado was the nation's leading silver producer and an important source of gold. With its abundant reserves of coal, natural gas, and other minerals—and the economic potential of its vast oil-shale deposits—Colorado remains a major mining state, although the mineral industry's share of the state economy has declined throughout this century. Agriculture, primarily livestock, retains its historic importance.
Trade, services, government, and manufacturing were responsible for more than 75% of new jobs created between 1975 and 1985. From 1972 to 2000, Colorado's employment in advanced technology grew from 39,000 to 125,000 employees. A driving force behind Colorado's economy is the US government, which employs over 93,000 civilian and military personnel in the state. Mining and construction suffered the greatest losses of employment between 1982 and 1992. Mining jobs declined 53% in that decade, and construction jobs dropped 29%. Employment in services, in contrast, rose 36% in those years, and jobs in finance, insurance and real estate increased by 15%. Tourism has also expanded rapidly in all areas of the state. Colorado's economy recovered strongly in the 1990s. By 1997 Colorado's gross state product was nearly $130 billion. By 2000, it had grown nearly 31%, with annual growth rates of 7.9% in 1998, 8.9% in 1999, and 11.2% in 2000. In the national recession of 2001, growth slowed abruptly to 2.6% as manufacturing fell 10.2% from the year before, leaving only a net gain of 1.5% in the sector from 1997 to 2001. Recovery remained elusive in 2002, as the state posted its first annual decline in employment since 1986.
In 2001, Colorado's gross state product stood at $173.8 billion, the 21st highest among the states. The public sector accounted for 11.8% of the total, close to the state average. The main contributors to gross state product were general services ($41.9 billion, up 31% since 1997); financial services ($31.8 billion, up 45.2% from 1997), government ($20.5 billion, up 21% from 1997); transportation and utilities ($19.3 billion, up 30%); and manufacturing ($15 billion). Conventional foreclosure rates, which had reached 3.25% in the recession of the early 1990s, and then fallen to less than 1% by the mid-1990s, ticked up to about 1.25% in 2002.