Utah First in Tech Job Growth
– By Howard Sierer –
Utah’s accolades keep rolling in. The Wall Street Journal, working with Moody Analytics, reports that Utah’s Salt Lake City tech hub was the country’s hottest job market in 2023. California’s loss has been Utah’s gain for the last ten-plus years, with white-collar workers streaming into the state from the Bay Area and Southern California.
Many of these workers have taken jobs in what boosters call “Silicon Slopes,” the Wasatch Front stretching from Ogden to Provo and anchored by Salt Lake City. Immigration increased after the pandemic when many California workers were priced out of its housing market. Utah attracted these young workers who have been able to afford homes here.
And many of them appreciate easy access to Utah’s great outdoors that starts with mountains perched literally at the city’s edge. Metro-area directional signs reading “Alta 8” and “Park City 25” may be old hat to those living on the Wasatch Front but they elicit double takes by disbelieving newcomers.
Adam Kamins, an economist at Moody’s Analytics, says, “There’s a virtuous cycle where young, highly educated workers are moving into Salt Lake City and bringing in more money to that area.”
Those young workers, coupled with the state’s highest-in-the-nation birthrate, make Utah the youngest state in the union. That is no small contributor to Utah’s rank as the 10th healthiest state in the country for the third year in a row, according to the annual Sharecare Community Well-Being Index report that analyzed all 50 states.
High interest rates and tech layoffs in 2023 impacted the Wasatch Front along with the rest of the country last year. However, given Utah’s robust economy, it was easy for affected workers to find other employment given the area’s diverse economy that kept unemployment exceptionally low. As some IT startups had to cut back, financial or manufacturing companies snapped up their displaced workers.
Utah’s business-friendly laws and tax incentives have made Salt Lake City a good place to build and expand businesses in industries beyond tech. High-growth businesses in Salt Lake City include life sciences, manufacturing, and supply-chain logistics. Manufacturing and logistics companies that typically require larger tracts of land have comparatively little trouble finding space to locate.
In January, food company Mars Inc. announced a new 399,000 square-foot baking facility to make Nature’s Bakery snacks. Subzero Engineering, maker of data-center equipment, announced a 155,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in December.
Those of us in Southern Utah have continued to enjoy a robust economy as well. While our growth is powered by tourism and construction, we can hope that St. George’s Tech Ridge, located on the old airport site, will continue to attract tech companies to our “Silicon Slopes South.” We would certainly benefit from the cleantech industry with its modest demands on our limited land and water resources.
I made the right choice choosing to locate in Utah 25 years ago. Great scenery, great climate, great people. To each his own, but for me, to coin a phrase, “This is the right place.”
