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Utah outpaces national average in job numbers
Oct 22, 2021, 8:01 AM | Updated: 8:04 am
FILE - In this Tuesday, March 2, 2021, file photo, a woman, wearing a protective mask due to the COVID-19 virus outbreak, walks past the signs of an employment agency, in Manchester, N.H. Companies are advertising more jobs than they were before the pandemic, when the unemployment rate was a 50-year low of 3.5%. So they clearly want to add workers. Yet hiring stumbled in April because many employers couldn't find as many as they needed. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)
(AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)
SALT LAKE CITY — Utah’s unemployment rate dropped again in September to an estimated 2.4%, well below the national unemployment rate of 4.8%.
The state is also beating the nation at large in two-year job growth and is seeing a 3.4% increase since September of 2019, outpacing the national average of -2.5%.
Utah’s Chief Economist for the Department of Workforce services Mark Knold said that growth has put Utah in a very good place.
September’s unemployment rate dropped to an estimated 2.4%, with approximately 40,100 Utahns unemployed. Utah’s August unemployment rate was adjusted down to 2.5%. The September national unemployment rate also continued to decline and now stands at 4.8%.https://t.co/7ILUaAprPk
— Workforce Services (@JobsUT) October 22, 2021
“The Utah economy is still moving strongly through the greater pandemic event… Utah’s economy has more jobs now than it did prior to the pandemic’s onset and that speaks to Utah’s economic resiliency,” Knold said.
Joining Utah’s Morning News, DWS Deputy Director Nate McDonald added that that growth is only the case in two states, Utah and Idaho.
McDonald said there’s a number of reasons that could contribute to why Utah is doing so much better.
“One of [the reasons] is location. If you look at one of the things that the pandemic has really brought on is, is the stability of telework. And you know, Utah and Idaho, these the mountain areas we live in, has always been a place people have wanted to live,” McDonald said, adding that with the stability of telework, more people have moved to Utah.
