After ruminating on the idea of a mobile spa for months, Jennifer Judge finally decided it was time to start a business.
In early April, she filed the paperwork with the state to make Howling Moon Sauna official. She invested in a wood-fired mobile spa that is now located just outside of Fraser, along Saint Louis Creek “with beautiful views of the Continental Divide,” she said.
“I’d personally been leaning more into health and wellness for myself and really, would like to contribute to my community, to visitors to Grand County, to offer a wellness experience,” said Judge, who has spent most of her career in the now-challenged technology industry. “It’s allowing me to transition a bit from a career that I’ve had for 15 to 20 years.”
Judge joined more than 51,000 Coloradans between April and June who filed to start a business, a 19% increase from second quarter a year ago, according to secretary of state data shared Monday. It was the highest second quarter in more than a decade.
While Colorado has been a top place to start a business, filings had sagged last year, a trend blamed both on a sluggish economy and the end of discounted business filing fees the prior year that encouraged business activity post pandemic.
But there are likely other reasons for the uptick.
Secretary of State Jena Griswold attributed the jump to the uncertainty of tariffs in the Trump administration, layoffs of federal workers and budget cuts on all sorts of federal aid. Consumer prices have increased while 39 states, including Colorado, saw their first-quarter GDP decline, she said.
“The rate of inflation was at its highest point since last February,” Griswold said during a news conference Monday. “That may be a sign that Coloradans are looking to supplement their income after noticing that their money at the grocery store isn’t going as far as it used to.”
The 19% increase was still a surprise, said Brian Lewandowski, executive director of the University of Colorado’s Business Research Division at the Leeds School of Business.
“We’ve been expecting a rebound in new business filings for a while, but that’s a really nice rebound for the second quarter,” Lewandowski said during the same news conference. “And I do call it a rebound because when we were looking at the same data a year ago, we were talking about a 22% decrease in filings. This is quite a jump.”
At the same time, Griswold and Lewandowski seemed upbeat about where the state’s economy is headed. The quarterly business-filing data also show that fewer companies are dissolving, a steady number are renewing and the number in good standing continues to climb.
Filing to start a new business in Colorado doesn’t always translate into a new tax-paying business in Colorado, but it can be an indicator of future growth and more jobs. Details on what types of companies are starting up isn’t something the Secretary of State’s Office tracks or asks for in the application.
Also, as reported last week, the number of jobs created in Colorado for the past 12 months ending in June was 10,600. That’s a slowing job-growth rate of 0.4% for the state, and below the nation’s 1.1%.
But that means the state is still adding jobs, Lewandowski said.
“When looking at the jobs report that came out last week, I think there’s some good signals in there that show Colorado’s labor force continued to increase, albeit very slightly, in June. And we saw a decreasing number of unemployed individuals,” he said. “We’re also not seeing a big spike in unemployment claims or WARN notices in the state.”
So far in 2025, about two dozen companies submitted WARN filings, as part of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. Employers must tell state labor departments of large layoffs or facility closures that will impact local workers. About 2,600 workers lost their jobs.
The rise in new business filings was interesting and unexpected. But, “We shouldn’t overread what new businesses mean,” Griswold said.
“Oftentimes it indicates an unknown future, or a little bit more instability than prior (period) for the economy in general,” she said. “An increase in business filings, as we’ve said, may not lead to new jobs. It may or may not. It could be that the mom who has two kids at school, who already has a 40-hour work week is adding a job because she’s worried that the cost of rent, the cost of groceries, the cost of higher education and medical is going to be too high for her to keep up with.”
