B U S I N E S S - F R I E N D L Y
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Grooming the Trail by A D A M B R U N S
Resources supporting business growth in Utah appear to be having their desired effect
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BUSINE SS IN U TA H
U
tah has few rivals across a wide range of businessfriendliness indicators. The signs are everywhere. The state’s short- and longterm job, wage and GDP growth are the first clue that companies and communities are growing. Consider the Utah cities included in Milken Institute’s 2018 Best-Performing Cities index: Provo-Orem (population: 618,000) No. 1, Salt Lake City
(population: 1.2 million) No. 10 and Ogden-Clearfield (population 667,000) No. 21 . Among 201 small cities analyzed by Milken, St. George — a town of 166,000 driven by tourism, health care and a growing retiree population — comes in at No. 2, and Logan (138,000) places 10th. Provo-Orem repeated its performance from 2017, thanks to what Milken termed “exceptional” five-year job growth, and investments
