- Utah was named the state with the best economic outlook for the 18th year in a row.
- The ranking focused on recently passed tax cuts. It did not include investments into public resources.
- State leaders said the No. 1 ranking is the result of Utah's hardworking culture and strong community.
State leaders gathered at the governor’s mansion on Tuesday to celebrate a new report recognizing Utah as the state with the best economic outlook for the 18th year in a row.
Gov. Spencer Cox, state Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, and House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, attributed the winning streak to a series of tax cuts and the unique qualities of Utah residents, including their religiosity.
While on a trade mission to Canada last week, Cox told the Deseret News that one thing he regretted from his first term was not using his position to highlight the state’s unique religious values that contribute to its success. On Tuesday, Cox made an effort to do just that.
“We truly believe that we can be the best at everything because we have the best people,” Cox told lawmakers and media on the west steps of his residence. “Utah is No. 1 in the country for people of faith. I don’t care what your faith is, even if it’s not organized religion, believing in something bigger than yourself, I think that matters.”
Cox made sure to clarify he wasn’t talking about any specific faith tradition. But he said the absence of religious belief systems leaves a God-shaped hole that is increasingly filled with “things of the moment” that do not matter in the long run to the health of future generations.
Utah has the highest rate of religious affiliation and worship-service attendance in the country. Cox linked the state’s outlier status in terms of religious adherence to its nationally recognized ability to plan for the future, making it one of the least federally dependent, and one of the most well-prepared, states in the nation.
“There is something about believing in something bigger than any one person, it makes us less selfish,” Cox said. “When you believe that there’s something more out there, something bigger than us, it makes us care about the future.”
Adams and Schultz also balanced their praise between Utah policymakers and private citizens. The state’s consistent No. 1 placement is evidence that frugal spending, lower taxes and light-handed regulation lead to a higher quality of life for Utahns, according to Adams.
“It doesn’t happen by chance. This is by choice,” Adams said. “It’s policies. It’s things that we’ve put in place.”
Intentional legislative decisions over multiple decades have strengthened Utah from the ground up, according to Schultz, who argued that steady conservative leadership has created an environment where Utah communities can flourish.
“Utah’s success is rooted in the principles that work,” Schultz said. “A business friendly, but most importantly, a family friendly environment that fosters innovation and upward mobility.”
What’s in the report?
The “Rich States, Poor States” report is published annually by the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a conservative policy group that connects state legislators across the country to discuss model legislation.
Each year, ALEC scrutinizes states based on the same 15 metrics focused on tax rates, debt service, size of public workforce and right-to-work status. These policies are associated with business growth and serve as an accurate forecast a state’s economic outlook, according to ALEC chief economist Jonathan Williams.
Utah has come out on top of the ranking every year since it began in 2007. This success is the result of proactive policymaking, Williams said. If the Utah Legislature had simply kept its economic policy the same after receiving first-place in ALEC’s inaugural report, the state would now be ranked No. 23.
“It’s an incredible testament to legislative leaders and policy makers across the board,” Williams told the Deseret News on Monday.
The latest report ranked Utah highly across most indicators, especially in terms of recently legislated tax decreases. Since 2021, state lawmakers have reduced the income tax four times, from 4.95% to 4.5%, and have expanded tax credits four times for Social Security recipients and three times for families with young children.
Where the state really shines is in terms of economic performance. The report found that from 2013-2023, Utah saw the largest cumulative increase in gross domestic product in the nation, at 107.9%, and the largest growth in employment, at 32.7%.
“This is just an incredible economic success story,” Williams said. “Utah is a picture-perfect example of when you get it right on public policy and you make your state a lower cost-of-living state with a higher quality of life, that is an incredible formula for economic growth.”
But this formula appears to ignore many of the state’s shortfalls that make it hard for working families to make ends meet, according to Utah House Minority Leader Angela Romero, D-Salt Lake City.
Romero shared her Republican colleagues’ celebration for another No. 1 ranking but said it was a “concerningly biased evaluation of economic success” because it excluded important factors like the state’s poor showing on metrics of women’s equality, workers compensation and labor protections.
“Rather than accounting for factors that affect regular working people and families, the index praises Utah for its low minimum wage and tax cuts in favor of corporations,” Romero said. “As a state, we must protect the economic outlook for all Utahns, not only a select few.”
Is more growth good?
While economic giants like California and New York lost nearly 2 million people who moved to other states over the report’s 10-year timeframe, Utah received over 126,400 transplants, making it the state with the 13th highest rate of net in-migration, the report found.
The trend goes back much further. Utah has had a net positive in-migration rate every year out of the past 35 years except for two, according to Natalie Gochnour, director of the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.
This means a total of almost 700,000 people have decided to relocate to Utah from other states over the last few decades. While there are difficulties associated with growth, being a “magnet state” is a positive sign for current residents, Gochnour said.
“They go together,” Gochnour said. “If you’re providing opportunities for your children and grandchildren, you’re also providing opportunities for people all around the country to come to your economy.”
The pro-growth policies being measured by ALEC shouldn’t be viewed as corporate handouts, according to Gochnour. They have had a very real return on investment. Not only did Utah lead the nation in terms of GDP growth last year — doubling the national average — it also topped the list in terms of median household income adjusted for cost of living and had one of the lowest poverty rates in the country.
As an economist, Gochnour said these high levels of economic opportunity are driven by investments. But the kind of risk-taking that leads to innovation, jobs and a higher quality of life is “distorted” by high taxes and overregulation, she said.
While Utah leaders have done a good job of encouraging a robust free market, they have also sought to find a balance where “purposeful” investments are made into infrastructure and education, Gochnour said, pointing out that Utah has the third most well-trained adult population in the country in terms of post-secondary degrees, credentials and certificates.
The state’s plaudits — which include the best state in the nation two years in a row, best state to start a business and best state for social mobility — are a function of a “pattern of leaders” that have created a fiscally responsible and forward-looking environment, Gochnour said.
But the national recognition is even more a reflection of Utah’s “social capital,” according to Gochnour, consisting of “networks of trust, relationships, collaboration (and) connection” that exist in Utah communities but are harder to measure.
“It’s our social capital that gives us the ability to prevent problems, to solve problems and to move forward in a better way,” Gochnour said. “And so if there’s one thing that I don’t think the ALEC report totally captures ... it would be that we still in Utah know how to work together.”
What is ALEC?
ALEC was formed over 50 years ago as a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, working mostly with Republican-led legislatures to promote federalism, limited government and free markets.
For 2025, the organization unveiled 32 pieces of model legislation centered around affordable energy, tax reform and education scholarships.
Multiple proposals, including on school vouchers and transparent taxation, are based off Utah legislation, and some recent Utah legislation, including a bill preventing the early retirement of power plants, was based off ALEC model legislation.
ALEC does not lobby lawmakers to pass their model legislation to improve their ranking on ALEC’s annual report, according to state Sen. Lincoln Fillmore, R-South Jordan, who serves as ALEC’s legislative co-chair in Utah.
“There’s no coordinated efforts,” Fillmore told the Deseret News on Monday. “ALEC really is a forum whereby the best ideas in the country can rise to the top.”
Utah lawmakers frequently pitch novel legislation passed in the Beehive State to ALEC to become model legislation for other states to consider, Fillmore said.
However, the primary source of inspiration for new legislation is constituents, Fillmore said. And while some principles, like individual freedom, should guide policymaking, Fillmore said it is ultimately the Utah people that determine whether good policy passes and succeeds.
“I would just give full credit to the people of Utah,” Fillmore said. “Anything in politics that is a benefit is just really downstream of the culture that Utahns have created.”