New York residents are New Yorkers, Cleveland natives are Clevelanders, New Orleans is populated by New Oreleanians--though natives often refer to themselves as "yats" (whose apparent etymology is from the peculiar prononciation of "Where y'at," i.e. a contraction of "Where you at?")--, but what on earth are we Colorado Springs denizens and/or natives to be called? Colorado Springsians? Colorado Springers? Springsonians?[ibimage==31695==Medium==none==self==ibimage_align-left] Perhaps we ought to punt, linguistically and construct a name for our identity that has no apparent relationship with the original name, such as the "Yat" for New Orleanians. It's a marked challenge to think of something all that peculiar to our region dialectically. We say "dude" with some frequency. Maybe could be "dudes?" Doubt seriously that the suggestion would win any sort of popularity contest here in town.

Whatever, we... Colorado Springsonianites (aka "dudes") are apparently losing jobs from our tech area. This fact was covered by our local paper in a well-written article (Cf. http://gazette.com/colorado-springs-faces-tough-question-where-have-all-the-workers-gone/article/1543702). As someone who loves my hometown, and who owns a tech-related business here, I fret. Compounding the anxiety is the fact that this job-shedding is taking place in a generally improving U.S. economy. [ibimage==31696==Original==none==self==ibimage_align-right]Without a lot of fanfare, the overall U.S. unemployment figure has fallen. As is clear from the figure I've included here (from a well done article in The Blaze (http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/01/22/fact-check-no-actual-unemployment-isnt-37-2-percent/), it is not as if this improvement has brought us back to a non-recessionary, historical norm. That said, it is improvement. And the overall downward trajectory is fairly obvious.

Okay, so then, why, I ask myself with some trepidation vis-a-vis the tech future of the Springs (for we Springsianators), I again ask why is it that we are losing jobs in this area in a time of lowering unemployment? I wonder if a part of it (and I'd be curious, very curious about others' ideas about what might explain this trend) is that there are differing trends between different areas of the economy.

I hope this is an anomaly, perhaps an increase in employment in this sector is merely lagging the overall trend. Alternatively, perhaps there are some structural elements of our local economy that make the creation of non-military-related tech jobs harder to create here. Perhaps the lack of traffic via our municipal airport? Perhaps the region's military orientation has some bearing. If you are reading this, and have ideas, I'd love to hear them. I'm easy to reach.

Sean Alden Fitzgerald

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