The top one percent of Coloradans earn about 20 times more than the average income for everyone else in the state, according to a report from the Economic Policy Institute. Ouch.
While the bottom 99 percent of Coloradans have seen their real incomes grow by 4.9 percent from 2009 to 2013, the incomes of top one percent grew over 41 percent in the same time. Double ouch.
See which Colorado cities are the most unequal after the jump. (Triple ouch?)
So first things first, Denver doesn't even crack the top five most unequal areas in Colorado. To measure this, researchers looked at the ratio of what the average person in the one percent earns compared to what the average person in the bottom 99 percent earns.
The Glenwood Springs area, which includes Pitkin County and Aspen, earns the title of most unequal Colorado metro. Not only that, the area is among the 10 most unequal places that EPI studied.
Denver comes in seventh among the Colorado metros studied, with the average one percent earner getting a mere 19.3 times as much money as the average 99 percent earner. Nationally, that places the Denver metro among the top 20 percent of the 916 studied.
And Craig wins the title of the least unequal, with its top one percent earners getting over 10 times as much as the average 99 percent of earners.
Here's the full table:
| National Rank out of 916 metros | Metro and Micro areas | Top-to-bottom ratio | Average income of the top 1% | Average income of the bottom 99% |
| 9 | Glenwood Springs - Aspen | 42.4 | $2,441,991 | $57,634 |
| 21 | Sterling | 32.5 | $1,192,457 | $36,719 |
| 29 | Steamboat Springs | 29.8 | $1,772,705 | $59,505 |
| 30 | Edwards - Vail | 29.6 | $2,055,108 | $69,343 |
| 61 | Boulder | 24.9 | $1,714,866 | $68,980 |
| 152 | Breckenridge | 19.9 | $1,256,680 | $63,243 |
| 172 | Denver-Aurora-Lakewood | 19.3 | $1,179,227 | $60,955 |
| 227 | Durango | 18.2 | $996,456 | $54,698 |
| 444 | Grand Junction | 15.4 | $645,045 | $41,847 |
| 507 | Fort Collins | 14.7 | $805,257 | $54,729 |
| 593 | Cañon City | 13.8 | $436,780 | $31,730 |
| 606 | Montrose | 13.6 | $477,630 | $35,032 |
| 653 | Greeley | 13.1 | $701,081 | $53,349 |
| 692 | Fort Morgan | 12.6 | $481,285 | $38,168 |
| 705 | Pueblo | 12.5 | $426,478 | $34,223 |
| 713 | Colorado Springs | 12.4 | $613,728 | $49,614 |
| 842 | Craig | 10.4 | $458,417 | $44,001 |
Update: We've added some details about the areas studied in this report to include more details about what major cities are in each designation.
