The demise of the energy boom in the 1980s has led to a slight decline in Utah household income, according to University of Utah economists.
Economic prosperity in the 1970s pushed the average household income to $29,600 by 1979, almost $1,400 above the national average of $28,209, according to an article in the Utah Economic and Business Review, published by the Bureau of Economic and Business Research at the University of Utah.However, the sluggish economy of the next decade eroded earning power and, by 1989, the median Utah household had dipped to $29,470, almost $600 below the national average of $30,056.
State officials have boasted of Utah's robust economy, pointing to low unemployment figures, a relatively cheap and highly educated workforce and budget surpluses at a time when 40 other states were in the red. The state has been showcased as a model of economic success by several national magazines.
However, authors R. Thayne Robson and James A. Wood said that, while Utah outpaced the region and nation economically throughout the 1970s, the trend flattened and then dipped over the next decade.
It picked up again in 1989, they wrote, although household incomes are improving "only slightly."
"The decade of the 1990s will be better than the 1980s but will not likely return to the growth rates of the 1970s," they wrote.
The article attributes the "diminished economic well-being of Utah households" to shifts in the types of work available to residents. For instance, high-wage jobs in industries such as mining, construction and manufacturing have given way to lower-paying jobs in the service industries.
In 1980, Robson and Wood wrote, 31.3 percent of the total earnings in Utah came from goods-producing industries. By 1990, the industrial share had dropped to 24.1 percent.
These structural changes, however, do not fully account for the decline. Inflation and the eroding buying power of the dollar were significant enough to result in a decrease in median wages even without the shift in jobs.
The result, the article said, is that more people were working more hours for less money. In 1980, 64.3 percent of Utahns 16 and older were working or looking for work. A decade later, that number had increased to 68 percent.
Particularly impacted were women. In 1980, 49.5 percent of Utah women worked. In 1990, 58.6 percent had or were looking for jobs.
In a county-by-county comparison, Robson and Wood found that residents in just eight of Utah's 29 counties had household incomes above the state average in 1989: Box Elder, Tooele, Salt Lake, Davis, Weber, Morgan, Summit and Emery.
The poorest county was San Juan, with its large Navajo population, where in 1989, 36.4 percent of its residents lived below the poverty level. That's up from 31.9 percent in 1979.
Median household income in San Juan County dropped from $23,137 in 1979 to $17,289 a decade later - a drop of 21.9 percent. (These and subsequent figures have all been adjusted for inflation to 1989 dollars.)
However, three other counties saw larger percentage drops in their incomes, most likely due to hard times in the oil, gas, coal and uranium mining industries.
The average household income in Grand County, home of Utah's uranium mining industry, dropped 24.5 percent, from $28,749 to $21,695; Carbon County, the heart of the Utah coal industry, saw a 24.3 percent drop from $33,750 to $25,555 and Uintah County, with its oil and gas industries, declined 22.9 percent, from $31,080 to $23,968.
It was the energy boom in the 1970s, with its accompanying construction of power plants, new coal production and oil and gas exploration, that resulted in higher household incomes in the first place, Robson and Wood said.
However, world competition and a global economy resulted in the collapse of the energy market and a decline in construction and high-paying jobs.