Current State of Jobs in Rural Utah

Prepared by Zac Whitwell, Department of Workforce Services and GRPB Member

Mr. Zac Whitwell prepared the following report for the September 4 Governor ’ s Rural Partnership Board

meeting outlining the current state of Utah’ s rural economy.

In 2017, during his State of the State address, Governor Herbert introduced the 25k Rural Jobs Initiative with the goal to create 25,000 new jobs in rural Utah within the ensuing 4 years. What we are defining as “rural Utah” is any county that isn’t Davis, Weber, Utah, and Salt Lake. These four counties are our definition of “metro Utah” . Based on this definition there are 25 rural counties. Since the 25k rural jobs initiative was implemented, we have achieved 79% of our total goal. Given that Washington County is the largest county economy within the 25-county rural designation one would expect that they would also add the most new jobs. However, it is important to note that since the start of the 25k rural jobs initiative 24 of 25 counties have shown a positive job growth.

When comparing current employment numbers to the pre-recession high, then the majority of Utah counties have not only recovered, but exceed, that pre-recession high.

Three out of the top five counties on this chart are considered rural Utah: Wasatch, Washington, and Grand.

Not all counties have yet recovered in terms of employment numbers returning back to their pre-recession peak. These are the 7 counties whose employment count are still below the pre-recession peak.

However, this picture doesn’t necessarily mean that they aren’t currently experiencing any growth, but that the growth experienced still hasn’t brought them back to their pre-recession peak. For example, six of the seven counties here have had positive job growth over the most recent 12-months data, March 2018 to March 2019.