Recently, L3 Communications in Salt Lake City announced that it would lay off 220 workers. No one likes to see layoffs. When your neighbor loses their job, it is a layoff. When you lose your job, it is a crisis. We as individuals can relate to the disturbing and personal side of losing a job. As economists though, we are also charged with looking at layoffs through the lens of the big-picture economic viewpoint.
The L3 layoff is a small blip in the current Utah economic performance. Utah still has more to go to rebuild its economic strength that was undermined during the Great Recession, but Utah is rebounding briskly from that recession and is currently adding jobs on an annual basis higher than its long-term average. Over the past year Utah has added 40,000 jobs to its employment count. That’s on average 3,300 per month. Removing 220 workers from that count for September lowers the monthly gain for that one month to 3,100. You can see how that really isn't much of a setback for an economy on a dynamic path such as ours. Does that mean all of those workers will have an easy time finding new jobs? Not necessarily, but their chances are much better here in Utah than they may otherwise be in a less dynamic state than Utah, and there are plenty of those out there.
Layoffs that come in a sizeable package from a noticeable company like L3 make headlines. What doesn't make headlines are the small number of hires each day across the entire spectrum of Utah companies that when added together amount to a sizeable and healthy amount of job expansion, as the 40,000 jobs attest to. That is where the big-picture look at the economy helps to evaluate individual company announcements against the entire spectrum. Is it an isolated case, or a symptom associated with a system-wide problem?
