While Utah may have challenges and trouble spots, the recurring theme at the recent Utah Economic Summit was simple: Things are good.
Sprinkled throughout speeches, panel discussions and breakout sessions were both a sense of accomplishment in building Utah’s long-running economic strength and optimism that it will continue.
Gov. Gary Herbert, the summit’s host, told the crowd of about 1,000 people that Utah’s unemployment rate is a 2.9 percent, its job growth is a 3.7 percent and its GDP growth is the nation’s second-best at 4.3 percent.
“By almost every measurable indicator, Utah enjoys the healthiest and most diversified economy — which is an important aspect; we don’t have all our economic things in one basket — and has the largest middle class … with the greatest upward mobility of any state in America,” Herbert said. “Together, we have done some great things, so I want to thank all of you for the work that you’re doing.”
Natalie Gochnour, associate dean in the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business, director of the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute and chief economist for the Salt Lake Chamber, said Utah’s economic strength is “very broad-based” and that the state is in “a very prosperous time.”
“We know that next month — June 2019 — Utah’s economy and our nation’s economy, I might add, will celebrate 10 years of expansion, the longest on record,” she said. “That’s a big accomplishment.
“You have strong, durable job growth, around 3 percent. Unemployment, we learned just this morning, [is] just below 3 percent. We have in-migration. We have rising wages. We have immense opportunity.”
Utah’s economy is bolstered by several industries, she said, listing aerospace, manufacturing, tourism, energy, information technology and life sciences. For example, growth in IT jobs the past decade has been 1.6 percent in the nation but more than twice that rate in Utah.
“I just want to say, as a young baby boomer — I’m [from] the last year of the baby boom — to those in the Generation X and the millennial class: We have a strong economy. It is a prosperous time. Let’s keep it going.”
In introducing Herbert’s keynote presentation, Rob Brough, executive vice president of marketing and communications for Zions Bank, described Utah as “the envy of the nation.” Among its attributes are low unemployment, strong job growth, economic diversity, healthy small-business lending, large population growth and a high labor force participation rate, he said.
Those came about in great part because of Herbert, Brough said, adding that the governor “has made Utah a haven for business creation and the state is seen as a model for other states to emulate.”
Utah also has witnessed growth in exports, according to Sarah Kemp, deputy undersecretary for international trade in the U.S. Department of Commerce.
“Exports support millions of jobs in the United States, including right here in Utah,” Kemp said. “In 2018, Utah led the nation — let me say that again: Utah led the nation — in year-on-year export growth, further underscoring the importance of exports to your economy. Something clearly is working well here along the Wasatch Range.”
One of the summit’s featured speakers lauded Utah’s attitude as a reason for its economic prowess. Carly Fiorina, founder and chairman of Carly Fiorina Enterprises, former CEO of Hewlett Packard and former presidential candidate, noted that Utahns are not content despite the current economic good times.
“One of the reasons I always very much enjoy coming to Salt Lake and to Utah is it strikes me that this is a place of possibilities,” Fiorina said. “It has always been a place of possibilities. In fact, as we were landing on the airplane yesterday, I was thinking about the first settlers of Utah, what they must have seen as they came over the crest and saw the valley below. What they saw were possibilities, where maybe others saw nothing at all.”
Fiorina said the summit itself served as an example of Utahns constantly striving for improvement.
“People here in Utah — your governor, your lieutenant governor —they can be forgiven if they said, ‘You know, everything is going great. Let’s just keep doing what we’re doing. Let’s preserve the way things are because the way things are is pretty good,’” Fiorina said. “And yet, you’re holding this economic summit at a time of really unprecedented prosperity and growth because you’re not content with the way things are, because you actually want to do better than the way things are, because you see possibilities beyond the way things are.”
Herbert likened the summit to the sharpening of an ax, empowering Utahns to “take on the world and see what we can do.” The event, presented by the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, World Trade Center Utah and the Salt Lake Chamber, is in its 13th year.
“It’s an important part of our administration,” Herbert said, “and part of our efforts to make sure that everyone is energized, that you can come here and you can have your batteries recharged and hopefully charge out the door and … ‘Go, Utah!’”