Utah has added a cumulative 32,100 jobs in the last year, with a nonfarm year-over-year payroll employment rate increase of 1.9%, equivalent to the national average, according to Utah’s Department of Workforce Services’ January 2024 employment summary
The state’s January unemployment rate is estimated at 2.8%, .9% lower than the national average. Nearly 50,300 Utahns are currently unemployed.
“Utah begins the year with continued job growth, but at a more reserved pace than seen over the past several years,” Mark Knold, chief economist at the Department of Workforce Services, said, per the report. “The economy is still creating new jobs, illustrated by the over 32,000 recorded across the past year. But the amount of online job postings has slowed from recent elevated levels. The want for new workers feels like it is settling into a flow more akin to an historical norm. The high growth of the last few years was a pandemic-driven, monetary-stimulus anomaly. The sense now is the stimulus has run its course, and a return to ordinary job growth has materialized.”
The job market in Utah
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that as of December 2023, Utah was tied with Alabama as the ninth state with the lowest unemployment rate in the country.
Utah is one of the leading states for side hustles and entrepreneurial growth and “boasts a thriving small business ecosystem, with 99.3% of all Utah businesses falling into this category,” per the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “Nearly half of Utah’s workforce works within small businesses. Within this dynamic landscape, women own 43.8% of small businesses, 4.9% are minority-owned, 7% are owned by Hispanics, and 5.4% are veteran-owned.”
A recent study also ranked the Beehive State as the most competitive state in the U.S. for high-paying jobs. In Utah, the average amount of daily application submissions for every job was 34.9 applicants submitted a day for a job.
“I don’t think anyone realizes how many great opportunities and careers in the trades there are out there,” Michelle Price, director of Alpine School District’s career and technical education program, told Utah Business. “The one thing I’d want others to know is that these aren’t low-level, low-paying jobs or careers. There’s everything from HVAC and general construction — where kids build a house from the ground up — to plumbing and electrical, cosmetology and nursing.”