If you're a single woman living along the Wasatch Front and want to increase your chances of meeting a man, you may want to consider moving.
According to a recent Census Bureau report, the ratio of unmarried men to unmarried women in the Salt Lake-Ogden and Provo metropolitan areas shows there are more single women than men. In Weber, Davis and Salt Lake counties, there are 90.42 unmarried men to every 100 unmarried women. In Utah County, there are even fewer men, some 86.45 men to every 100 women.Statewide, however, unmarried men slightly outnumber unmarried women. There are 359,851 unmarried men to 358,785 unmarried women in the state, according to the 1990 Census.
Sandy Gagon, marketing director for Latter Day Ideals, a local dating service for single Mormons, said she doesn't see as large a gap between the numbers of single men and women as the Census Bureau numbers show.
"It runs about 50 percent each," she said.
Gagon said that her biggest complaint isn't with any scarcity of single members of the opposite sex but with finding people to meet.
"I hear both men and women complaining they don't know where to go to date," she said.
According to Julie Johnson, with the State Data Center, another factor may be at play. There is a greater percentage of the population in Utah that is married than in the rest of the United States; however, there is a trend toward less marriage.
"Utah is following trends but not to the same degree as nationally," Johnson said.
According to the 1990 Census, about 39 percent of the population, 15 years and over, had never married, divorced or been widowed.
When compared with the nation's 355 other metro areas, Utah's metro areas are still better than average when it comes to the unmarried male-to-female ratio. Salt Lake City-Ogden ranks 72nd in the ratio of unmarried men to 100 unmarried women. Provo-Orem ranks 107th.
Topping the list for high ratios of unmarried men are Jacksonville, N.C.; Killeen-Temple, Texas; Fayetteville, N.C.; Brazoria, Texas; and Lawton, Okla. Many of the towns are home to military bases, but the list may be misleading. For example, the large ratio of men in Brazoria are men behind bars in the Texas prison system.
In the West, areas with high ratios of unmarried men are San Diego; San Jose, Calif.; Reno, Nev.; Anchorage, Alaska; Bremerton, Wash.; Las Vegas and Yuma, Ariz.