Household income continued a steady retreat in Colorado in 2011 but, for the first time, showed signs that an economic recovery is making progress, according to newly released census data.

The median household income in the state was $55,387 in 2011, continuing an annual slide that began in 2007, when income peaked at $59,898 before the recession took hold.

But in a sign that a gradual recovery is underway, the year-to-year dip was less than $400 between 2010 and 2011 — a big improvement over the year before, when it fell more than $2,000.

“It does seem as if the decline in median income is decelerating,” said Jeffrey Zax, an economics professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “That’s what you’d expect at this stage in a recovery.”

The median household income is the point at which half of Colorado’s nearly 2 million households had income above that number and half below.

All the numbers have been inflation adjusted to 2011 levels using the Consumer Price Index to make accurate comparisons.

The data, from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, examines trends in commuting, lifestyles and health, and, while not exact, offers a portrait of how Americans’ lives change over time.

For example, the 2011 survey found that fewer Coloradans are walking, carpooling or taking public transportation to work, despite efforts to increase those numbers (74 percent drove to work alone in 2007, compared with 75.5 percent last year). More of us live in poverty (12 percent in 2007 and 13.4 percent last year), but more of us have college degrees (35 percent in 2007 and 36.7 percent last year).

“If there is a silver lining, it’s if people are unable to get job, they are going back to school or deciding to stay in school,” said Elizabeth Garner, the state demographer.

The survey also found that a smaller percentage of Coloradans have no health insurance (16.7 percent in 2008 and 15.1 percent last year). That could reflect that the state’s expansion of eligibility for Medicaid, particularly for children, is taking hold, or that the growth in the poverty percentage is making more of the working poor eligible for Medicaid coverage.

“You get yourself so poor, you actually qualify for Medicaid,” Garner said.

There are also less-ambiguous signs in the data that individual counties or Colorado’s neighbors are seeing economic improvement.

Boulder County, for example, experienced a $3 improvement in median household income between 2007 and 2011, from $68,634 to $68,637. It’s the only county in metro Denver to improve in that period.

And Colorado is no worse off than neighboring states, with the exception of Wyoming, which actually saw a modest year-over-year increase in median household income, from $55,201 in 2010 to $56,322 last year — an increase attributable to the growth in oil and gas production.

Patty Silverstein, chief economist at the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation, said that, given the job losses Colorado sustained during the recession, a gradual recovery is to be expected.

“Colorado took a very large hit in terms of employment activity,” Silverstein said. “You would still expect a decline (in household income) as you saw in most of the country.”

The state’s total employment has not yet returned to 2007 levels, and good-paying jobs in construction, information, information technology, and financial services sustained some of the biggest losses. Until those sectors recover, it will be tough for Colorado to declare the recovery complete.

“We’re on the road to recovery, though,” Silverstein said. “Nobody’s doing great, but Colorado is doing a little better than others.”

Burt Hubbard of I-News contributed to this report.

Chuck Murphy:

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