Utah's Business by Employment Size - Trendlines article

80,000 Worksites - That’s how many physical places of employment there are in Utah. These 80,000 worksites collectively employ about 1.2 million workers on payrolls in the state. How these businesses and employees are distributed across the state and its industries is the theme of this article. Utah is a big state geographically but most of its economic activity is concentrated along the Wasatch Front. In fact, over 80 percent of all jobs and businesses are within a 50-mile radius of Salt Lake City.

To read more, see the entire article here.

The Outlook for College Grads - Trendlines article

The outlook for employment is getting better each year as the economy slowly emerges from the grasp of the recession. A “better” outlook means that overall economic activity is increasing as demand for goods and services improves. Officially, the recession ended in June of 2009 but that was the bottom of the business cycle and our economy has a long way to go to gain back the economic and job losses. The good news is that we are experiencing job growth in nearly all industries across the state. The Utah unemployment rate has fallen from around 8.0 percent to under 6.0 percent. Consumer and business spending is up which means more jobs.

For graduates of colleges and universities, the improving job market signifies more opportunities. Hiring activity by employers is up, but not as robust as it was before the recession when speculation fueled hiring. Each year the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) conducts a survey of employers that requests information about business hiring prospects for the coming year. This year’s release stated employers plan to increase hiring activity by 9.5 percent over the class of 2011. Although this is an increase, the survey implied that much of the increase was due to fill vacancies resulting from attrition, not expansion, in employers’ workforces.

To read more, see the entire article here.

A New System of Classifying Occupations by Education and Training - Trendlines article

Job seekers, students, and anyone interested in working want to know what educational and training requirements are needed to get started in an occupation. Do I need a degree, work experience in a related occupation, on-the-job training, or a combination of the three to jump into the world of work? Well, it depends on the occupation you are interested in. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has developed a new classification system that addresses the question of “delineating the most common way persons prepare for an occupation.”

In the past, the BLS has assigned training codes defining how workers prepared by determining the typical way one enters an occupation. This system, which we used at the Department of Workforce Services, specified 11 training levels as the typical method of job entry. This hierarchy was a continuum starting with academic credentials (degrees) and ending with basic short-term on-the-job training. Here is the list of the 11 education/training levels:

• First professional degree
• Doctoral degree
• Master’s degree
• Bachelor’s or higher degree, plus work experience
• Bachelor’s degree
• Associate degree
• Postsecondary vocational awards
• Work experience in a related occupation
• Long-term on-the-job training (including skilled and apprenticed trades) training in OJT setting and/or in formal classroom setting for one year or more
• Moderate-term on-the-job training—from one month up to one year
• Short-term on-the-job training—short demonstration and observation of less than one month.


To read more, see the entire article here.

New 3rd Quarter LMI Indicators for 9 counties available

3rd Quarter Nonfarm Employment for Box Elder, Cache, Daggett, Davis, Duchesne, Morgan, Rich, Uintah and Weber counties are available online.

For other counties, click here and choose the county you wish to view. Each link is under "Just Released" on the right hand side.

Utah construction jobs growing but behind national curve

Construction jobs in Utah are 39 percent off the state's pre-recession peak in 2007, but the numbers are gradually improving with a growth rate of 2.5 percent during the past year, according to a contractors trade group monitoring the rates.

Residential contractors in Utah have been stuck behind a backlog of homes already on the market. "The issue now with residential is the inventory," said John Mathews, an economist with the Department of Workforce Services. "We have to clear the inventory before we can move on." Deseret News

Did the Recession Drive People to Higher Education?

In a recent TrendLines magazine article, economist John Mathews writes:

What’s the evidence that recessions drive people to seek more training? One important indicator is to look at enrollment in our post-secondary education institutions.  Enrollment early in the decade shows what happened during the “DotCom” recession. Student counts peaked in 2003-2004 school year with 105,500 persons enrolled at the colleges and universities. Enrollments dropped to the 98,800 level in the 2006-2007 school year. These mid-decade years were Utah’s boom period where the perception in the market was that jobs were plentiful and workers didn’t need more training to get a job. Unemployment rates were near-record lows as the economy was rapidly expanding.

To read the full article, click here.

(Click to Enlarge)

Unemployment & Underutilization of Labor

The Unemployment Rate isn't the only way to measure the state of the economy. John Mathews outlines other ways to define unemployment in his Trendlines Magazine article. Below is an excerpt of the article which you can read in full by clicking here.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes “Alternative Measures of Labor Underutilization.”  These look at labor force participation and labor utilization through increasing stages of discernment. Six ascending measures of labor underutilization emerge, labeled U-1 through U-6.  With each successive step, additional and more liberal criteria are added. These alternative criteria are measured through the Census Bureau’s monthly Current Population Survey (CPS, or commonly called the Household Survey).  Results are compiled and released by BLS.  The closest measure to the official unemployment rate is the U-3 rate, it being “total unemployed as a percent of the civilian labor force.

If You Thought Wages Go Down in a Recession, Think Again

In a recent Trendlines magazine article, economist John Mathews comments:

Contrary to common thought, wages in the state have increased each year of the last decade. As Utah starts to pull out of the recession, the thoughts of how the economy was constrained by lack of demand causing layoffs, no hiring, and curtailed work hours continue to play out. Right along with this is the concept that wages in Utah had to drop because of the recession. Sounds logical. What happened was contrary to common thought. Average wages in the state did increase each year all the way through the 2000’s. That’s not to say we didn’t have a recession. We did. At the business cycle peak in 2007 employment in Utah was 1,250,000. In 2010, well after the official bottoming of the recession occurred in June of 2009, job counts dropped to 1,180,000. That’s evidence of the downturn. Employment declined but average wages increased.

To read the rest of this article and additional features, click here.

Pay in Utah

A Trendlines magazine article by Department of Workforce Services economist, John Mathews states:


The highest-paid professions in Utah in 2010 were doctors, dentists, lawyers, and engineering managers. The state’s lowest paid positions included hosts and hostesses, counter attendants in food service, food preparation workers, dishwashers, and fast-food cooks.

This information is from the annual Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) Survey, which produces estimates of wages for workers in about 600 occupations and nine geographic areas in Utah. Some 4,000 employers are surveyed annually to collect this important information. The highest-paid workers in Utah are in healthcare with medical doctors of different specialties median annual earnings of $100,000 to $200,000. Engineering managers, sales engineers, chief executives, pharmacists, and computer and information systems managers all had median annual earnings of $100,000 to $130,000.

To read the whole article, click here. The full issue of the magazine can be accessed here.

P&G distribution Center Should be Open for Business Next Month

Almost 100 people are employed at Procter & Gamble now, two years after construction began at the Greenfield, Box Elder County, site. That number will increase to about 300 by the end of the year. The human resources and external relations leader for Procter & Gamble, said the company’s distribution center is running test shipments before the official opening of the distribution center at the end of April. Currently the unemployment rate is 8.1 percent, in 2008, the county’s unemployment rate was 3.2 percent. Aside from providing much-needed jobs, Procter & Gamble will also bring financial gain to the county. Prior to the factory construction, the land it is on was farm ground with little taxable value. Standard Examiner

Students at Utah universities, colleges asked to dig deeper

A statewide wave of tuition increases is hitting college students as universities and colleges look to cover multimillion-dollar budget shortfalls. Last week, Weber State University approved a 4.5-percent resident tuition increase while Utah Valley University's board of trustees voted Thursday to increase tuition by 4.5 percent as well. Trustees at Southern Utah University approved an 11 percent tuition increase Friday and Utah State University students face a 6 percent jump. University of Utah trustees plan to meet Monday to approve an estimated 8 percent increase. All the colleges in Utah are also proposing increases. The increases must still be approved by the State Board of Regents, which is expected to announce a 1.5 percent "first-tier" tuition increase Thursday on top of the "second-tier" increases proposed by each university, making a 4.5 local tuition hike into a 6 percent rise. Deseret News

Construction in Utah--The industry hardest hit in the recession

Construction in Utah, and just about anywhere else, has taken a huge hit in this recession. The
industry hasn’t vanished, but has lost 30 percent of its workers due to lack of demand, overbuilding, and the collapse of the finance/funding sector. Of the total 65,000 jobs in Utah lost between September 2008 and September 2009, nearly 20,000 were in construction alone—a drop of 21 percent. Manufacturing was next closest shedding some 13,000 jobs or 10 percent of its total jobs. Construction employment peaked in 2007 for an annual average count of 103,400. That’s also the same year the national recession started (December of 2007). TrendLines

Call Center Lay Offs and New Jobs

Affiliated Computer Services said Monday it will hire 225 people to work at its call center at 1911 N. 2200 West in Salt Lake City.That news comes less than a week after CompuCredit, an Atlanta-based financial services company, said it will lay off 162 employees at its call center at 5215 Wiley Post Way; Convergys said it was hiring more than 1,500 temporary workers for its U.S. Census call centers in Taylorsville and Ogden; and 150 Clearfield-based call center workers laid off last October by Teleperformance USA learned they are eligible for federal assistance from the U.S. Department of Labor. In addition, Vangent Inc. and three temporary staffing companies in Utah are in the process of hiring another 1,500 temporary people to work at another Census Bureau call center in Sandy. Salt Lake Tribune