BOX ELDER BUSINESS SUMMIT
Brice Wallace
The Box Elder County area is part of “a prosperous valley” and has lots of possibilities for its economic future, according to a prominent economist.
Natalie Gochnour, director of the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, an associate dean in the university’s David Eccles School of Business and chief economist for the Salt Lake Chamber, recently told a crowd in Brigham City that Box Elder County is part of the Greater Salt Lake region, the state’s dominant economic engine.
“Being part of the Northern Utah region gives you all sorts of possibilities,” Gochnour said at the Box Elder Business Summit, presented by the Box Elder Chamber of Commerce. “People want to live in your region, your valley, for life quality reasons. They’ll still have economic opportunities and there’s just a lot that you can do with it. … You have a lot of things in your basket you can work with.”
Like the rest of Utah, Box Elder County can expect to see continued growth and change, additional in-migration and other characteristics common in the state, she said. However, Box Elder also has an additional tool in its economic arsenal: manufacturing. Of its approximately 23,000 employees, nearly 7,300 are in manufacturing.
“It just pops off the page,” Gochnour said of the county’s manufacturing statistics. “So, you have a specialization in manufacturing. You build things, you create things, and you’re a goods-producing economy, and I think that’s really positive. A lot of counties would love to have that. It’s a part of your mix.”
However, the region is underrepresented when it comes to the technology sector. “And I might think about,” she said, “how do I bolster in an environment where the Information Age is taking hold, where could I strengthen tech traction in this community?”
Still, Gochnour foresees Box Elder County becoming more economically diverse and more populous. It has a population of about 62,000 but projections are for about 90,000 by the year 2060. “That’s a lot of housing. That’s a lot of traffic. That’s a lot of commerce,” she said.
But the high end of projections puts the number at about 103,000. “So, from 60 to 100 [thousand], that’s a big, big jump. That changes the nature and character of the valley,” she said.
Between 2010 and 2020, the county saw strong growth but it was dispersed, with nearly every community growing during that time. Job growth from January 2023 to a year later was 1.8 percent in the county, nearly matching the state’s 1.9 percent rate. The unemployment rate was 2.6 percent in December, close to the state’s 2.8 percent level.
But any future growth could lead to delays on packed Utah roads and a continued rise in “outrageously expensive” housing, she warned.
That’s where the county can have an influence in what it becomes, she said. A very prosperous county will become more of a magnet for outsiders, while a stagnant economy will result in smaller growth, she said. County leaders need to be intentional and purposeful to make their vision a reality.
“It’s in the county’s interest to lead change,” Gochnour said. “And if you’re getting out in front of it, you’re actually guiding it to what you want. If you’re going to have all this growth, are you investing enough in the infrastructure? If you’re going to have all this growth, what are you doing to take care of the housing issues? If you don’t want a lot of this growth, what do you do to change it?”