Long-Term Employment Projections

The long-term employment projections have been updated for the time period of 2012 to 2022. Projections are produced for the state of Utah as well as for eight sub-state areas. The areas are determined by population and job density and are not created equal. But rather, types of jobs are determined by the nature of the local area’s economy. Short-term projections for 2012 to 2014 are also provided for statewide.

The value in providing these projections is to help identify which types of jobs are most likely to be in high demand in the future. Ultimately, the long-term employment projections act as a forecasting measure by which individuals as well as organizations and agencies can plan ahead.

See the latest long-term projections produced by DWS for the Ogden/Clearfield MSA area.

A Story of Wage Data

The Wages and Income page has a new look to the wage data that is gathered by the Workforce Research and Analysis division. Along with visualization of the data, you can now read story points at the top of each graph, to help understand what the data is showing you along with highlighting its insights. Just click along the story points at the top of the visualization to follow the story of wages.

WFN Location Quotients

In the summer issue of Local Insights we discussed the value of economic diversity and the Hachman Index (a method used to measure industry diversification in the labor market)[1]. The article states that:

The Hachman Index is derived from the weighted average of the industry Location Quotients (LQ) in a region. A LQ measures the regional concentration of employment in a given industry relative to a larger geography. As a rule of thumb, an LQ of 1.2 or higher represents an industry with a relatively high concentration of regional employment, while a score of 0.8 or lower indicates sparse regional employment… Breaking the Hachman Index into individual components provides insight into the distribution of employment in a local economy.

Figure 2 in that article resembles the charts to the right, except that the data in the article was aggregated to the regional level. Combining the employment counts for all three Wasatch Front North counties obscures the concentration of employment in certain industries at the county level. This article sheds light on the relative density of employment in each county.

When examining the three charts, note the scale on the horizontal axis. In 2012, Davis and Weber counties had very few location quotient outliers. In Davis County, six industries were within the “normal” location quotient range; in Weber County there were 10 industries with “normal” location quotients. Furthermore, the industry with the highest concentration of employment compared to national averages was public administration for both counties, registering LQs of 2.4 (Davis) and 2.0 (Weber).

In contrast, Morgan County only has three industries with LQs in the “normal” range, and the industry with the highest concentration – covered agriculture, forestry, fishing & hunting – has a large LQ of 9.7.

In Utah, there is a correlation between the size of a county’s labor force and the degree of industrial diversity in the county; in general, this means the more workers in a county the more diverse the economy of that county.  So it is not surprising that Davis and Weber counties have less variance in their respective LQs compared to Morgan County.

Understanding the relative concentration of employment by industry lends some insight into the comparative advantages of a region. In terms of the Wasatch Front North, we see that the labor economy is relatively diverse.

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[1] Article titled: Economic Diversity in Wasatch Front North

Hard at Work, Women in the Utah Labor Force

Hard at Work, Women in the Utah Labor Force has been updated on the DWS site into an interactive data visualization. See a snapshot of the visualization below.

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Upswing in U.S. Manufacturing & the Implications for Northern Utah

Tyson Smith - Economist

Recently, there have been a number of indicators suggesting that domestic manufacturing is gathering momentum (here, here and here, for example).  And while market forces have been working against keeping production in the United States for decades, we are starting to see economic incentives for “reshoring” manufacturing.  The financial advantages of outsourcing production to countries with lower labor costs still exist, but the margins for doing so are thinner than they were as recently as 10 years ago.  Furthermore, the shift toward automated production has put a higher premium on skilled labor versus inexpensive labor.

Even though the aforementioned structural shifts toward “reshoring” have encouraged increases in domestic manufacturing, the majority of the gains in output over the last 3 years have been a result of the global economy recovering from the Great Recession.  The pertinent question for us to examine is: How has the recovery affected employment in the manufacturing industry in Northern Utah? 

MSA Gross Domestic Product estimates released

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis just released 2012 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) estimates for Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) in the United States. On average, MSA real GDP (adjusted for inflation) increased by 2.5 percent in 2012—slightly lower than the total U.S. average of 2.8 percent.

Nationally, Texas and Indiana dominated the rankings for the fastest-growing MSAs. Each of these states placed three MSAs among the top ten. The New Orleans and San Francisco MSAs showed the fastest-growing large MSA economies.

In Utah, only the Logan UT-ID MSA experienced below-average expansion (up only 1 percent. The Provo-Orem MSA produced the highest percent change—4.5 percent and ranked 32nd nationally. The St. George MSA recovered from GDP contraction in 2010 to show a healthy 3.2 percent gain in 2012. For more information about this data release, click here.

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2011 Advance GDP by Metropolitan Area Released

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis recently released gross domestic product estimates for the nation’s 366 metropolitan areas. In 2011, metropolitan area growth registered an average of 1.6 percent—just slightly higher than the U.S. total (1.5 percent). However, the growth rate for metro areas dropped noticeably from the 2010 expansion of 3.1 percent.

Only 242 of the nation’s metropolitan areas experienced a 2011 gain in GDP. However, all of Utah’s metro area’s showed increases equal to or greater than the U.S. metro average. Both Ogden/Clearfield and Provo/Orem generated gains of greater than 5 percent. Lowest on the scale proved the Logan metro area with a gain of only 1.6 percent. For more information on the current release, click here.

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