Utah Grows Jobs Despite Dour National Trends

Utah's job growth continues to greatly outpace the rest of the nation. According to figures from the Department of Workforce Services the state's employment enjoyed a 1.4% increase last month (compared to a nearly 0.1% nationally). In addition, Utah's unemployment stood at 3.2%. The national unemployment rate for May was 5.5%. “[the rate is] still below the generally-accepted measure for 'full-employment' of 4-5%,” Robert Merrill, Technical Account Manager for SOS Engineering and Technology, said. “This means that people who would otherwise choose not to work are taking jobs and staying employed.”

"In the last year, the volume of openings has actually increased in the UT IT market," agreed Bretton Jolley, a Sr. Technical Recruiter for TEKsystems. “Many companies have had openings that they are struggling to fill and so the positions stay open longer. This combined with new openings has increased the total amount.” In particular, the positive job growth continues to be driven, in part, by software. “UT had a strong economy before the slowdown in Housing and Financial markets. During this time, companies were hiring developers like crazy and wages were on the rise. The unemployment rate for developers is very low. UT just doesn't have enough developers to support the current demand.” It was this same stellar growth in the software and IT fields that contributed to Utah being named one of the top 10 science and technology states.

However, available positions aren't isolated to programming fields. “Exceptional programming talent is difficult to find, but Electrical, Mechanical and Civil Engineering positions have been exceptionally hard to fill in our state for quite a while,” Robert said. “Designing and Drafting positions to support Utah's still-robust manufacturing industry are also difficult to locate. Finally, the oil and gas industry has several footholds in the Utah economy, and their growth and expansion has benefited our economy in some ways, too.”

To fill positions Utah companies are increasingly having to recruit labor from outside the state. "UT just doesn't have enough developers to support the current demand. A lot of UT companies have resorted to attracting out of state candidates and using more Visa holders to fill the gap," said Bretton. The problem has become so accute that the Govenor's Office of Economic Development recently began the Utah Recruitment Initiative (URI). “The goal has been to attract outside talent to the state to compensate for a lack of locally skilled workers," said Michael Sullivan, Director of Communications for the GOED. “With the first campaign, we generated more than 200 resumes of people willing to consider moving to Utah to work. At the same time we got word out to Utah companies the resource GOED had available for review, and in a matter of two weeks we had more than 90 Utah companies, large and small begin participating in the URI, which gave them access to the resumes of willing workers.

“Other states have now begun copying Utah's efforts. With the Utah real time workforce recruitment effort, we are finding the message of, 'come to Utah for a great job with a great future', rings well with those who have already lived here, or those who have already visited.”

If not the number, then national economic trends are at least affecting how employees commute to their jobs. "Current travel prices have become a particularly poignant concern for job-hunters," said Robert. "Many recent placements we have made resulted from people wanting to limit their commutes or 'stay closer to home'". Rob Fabry, a Principal Recuiter at Prince, Perelson, and Associates said "The increase in fuel prices have changed the way candidates look at opportunities. We expect that we will see much more telecommuting in the future." Thankfully the timing of additional commuting options has been incredibly fortuitous. “UTA has done a great job of providing public transportation between counties with the new Frontrunner and the Express bus from UT County. More job seekers are able to keep their commute distance the same without having to drive,” said Bretton. “We're also starting to see companies having some flexibility with regards to work schedules (4, 10 hour days) or telecommuting, in order to alleviate those concerns over fuel costs.”

The positive situation has resulted in Forbes ranking Salt Lake City as the nation's best location for jobs for the 2nd straight year. It's also caused those in the employment space remain optomistic, yet cautious, regarding Utah's job growth. “This slowdown is more directly linked to consumer issues (real estate and fuel) and isn't necessarily business driven, so demand for IT services to support the business core remains extremely high,” Bretton said. “I would be cautious to believe that we have hit bottom,” concludes Robert, “but Utah seems to have an interesting connection with industries either benefitting or otherwise unaffected by national events (energy, transportation, natural resources, military). The combination of those things leads me to believe Utah will likely have an even-stronger opportunity to take-advantage of the new technologies and innovations our companies are already investing in.”