Brice Wallace
Salt Lake Business Journal
As goes manufacturing, so goes Box Elder County’s economy.
A presentation at the recent Box Elder Business Summit made it clear that manufacturing is the county’s “economic backbone” and “just a power plant that continues to push money into our area.”
Those comments came from Michael Jeanfreau, senior economist at the Utah Department of Workforce Services, who noted that manufacturing affects several other economic sectors in the county.
“Manufacturing [is] our biggest employment base. The largest amount of payroll we have in the county really is around manufacturing, and it really feeds a lot of the other industries,” Jeanfreau said at the Box Elder Chamber of Commerce event in Brigham City.
Manufacturing accounts for 32 percent of the county’s total employment, at 7,594 workers as of September. The U.S. average is 8 percent.
Jeanfreau noted that the No. 2 county industry, trade and transportation, has 4,527 jobs, or 19 percent of the county total, and is “really dependent” on manufacturing.
“Manufacturing is the basic industry that brings a lot of money into the area, and retail trade has really sprung up around that,” he said. “And transportation obviously has a pretty symbiotic relationship with manufacturing, bringing things in and out of here, plus we sit at the northern end of the Wasatch Front, where anything coming into the region from the north really comes through Box Elder from the highway first.”
The county’s manufacturing contributes about $670 million in wages annually, or about 48 percent of the county's total. Among prominent companies are those in aerospace, auto supplies and food processing — the list features Northrop Grumman, Autoliv, Nucor Steel, Procter & Gamble and Post Consumer Brands. The county also has a lot of small machine shops and manufacturers that contribute, making Box Elder County among the most manufacturing-intensive areas in the West.
Manufacturing is a desired industry because of its ability to affect others, he said, noting it’s a “basic industry” in the economic world because of that trait. While retail trade tends to recirculate money in a local area, manufacturing brings money into the county from anywhere that a manufactured item is sold.
Basic industries like manufacturing really can be the backbone of long-term growth, and both Box Elder County and adjacent Cache County have manufacturing bases that are prevalent and have “buoyed up” other industries, “and it also really helps places like Box Elder and Cache avoid economic downturns,” he said.
Manufacturing, he said, helped the region through the COVID downturn because companies in that industry could not have their workers toil from home.
Manufacturing accounts for about half of Box Elder County’s total wages, averaging about $50 per hour and $108,000 a year, far above the county’s overall $78,000 average. That high pay has made Box Elder County a magnet for manufacturing workers, with about half of the incoming commuters, about 4,500 a day, driving into the county for jobs.
Despite that economic power, the industry has slipped a bit in recent years, losing 839 jobs in Box Elder County between September 2023 and the same month in 2024. That equates to about 10 percent of the county’s labor force. Salt Lake County lost 906 such jobs while the state gained 296 during that time. Nearby Weber County gained 1,174 manufacturing jobs and Davis County gained 326, while Cache County lost 176.
“That’s not great, right?” he said of Box Elder’s manufacturing job losses. “You don’t want to see those, especially when you talk about how manufacturing is the backbone of a lot of this stuff.”
Generally, he said, unemployed Utahns have been able to find new jobs relatively quickly. “In the long run, it’s when people can’t find new jobs that they can really start to see recessions begin,” Jeanfreau said. “So, I’m not too worried about this right now. As long as people can find a new job, you’re doing OK. It’s when people can’t find another job that you start to see, ‘OK, maybe we’re heading into a recession.’”
While Box Elder County and Utah generally have “worrying signs,” the worst projections for the state “still have us at pretty healthy growth in the long run,” Jeanfreau said. That’s why he’s predicting a “healthy, modest” state economy, with perhaps “a little bit of pain” due to uncertainties or a short recession.
“But,” he said, “the aggregates are pretty strong, so we should be OK.”