Across the United States, jobs are quantified through each
state’s unemployment insurance program. Those programs provide the potential
for laid-off workers to receive unemployment benefits — the goal being to
bridge the gap between workers’ lost jobs and their next jobs. An eligible
recipient’s weekly benefit amount is based upon their earnings from recent
work. This begs the question, how does Utah’s unemployment insurance program
know how much an individual recently earned while working?
That answer is supplied by all businesses that hire workers,
as they must report their employees and pay as mandated by the unemployment
insurance laws. Companies identify their individual workers and those workers’
monetary earnings for a calendar quarter. As businesses are identified by their
industrial activity and geographic location, it is through the unemployment
insurance program that aggregate employment counts by industry and location are
calculated.
Yet each state’s profiling of individuals is quite minimal
in the unemployment insurance program. The U.S. Census Bureau can bring more
light to the overall labor force by supplementing said information with gender,
age, race/ethnicity and educational attainment (imputted from American
Community Survey responses) for Utah’s labor force.
The Census Bureau packages this information through their
Local Employment Dynamics program and makes available said data on its website. Here at the Department of
Workforce Services, we recently downloaded and packaged Utah-specific data from
said website and summarized it in the attached visualization.
Various data “tabs” are available, presenting Utah’s economy from different angles, ranging from industry shares within the economy to the age-group distributions of the labor force, to gender and race distributions. These labor variables can be viewed for the state as a whole, or by each individual county.
Some statewide highlights:
Industry — industrial distribution is quite diverse, which
provides strength within the economy. Distributions do fluctuate with time,
with manufacturing seeing its share lessen while health care and professional
and business services shares have increased.
Age — the bulk of Utah’s labor force is composed of 25- to
44-year-olds. Older worker shares have increased over the past 15 years, yet
still remain a non-dominant portion of Utah’s labor force. The youngest
segments of the labor force declined noticeably during the Great Recession due
to less participation, and that trend remains.
Educational Attainment — turnover rates are understandably
highest with workers under the age of 25 as they strive to build their
educational foundation and also find their niche in the labor market. A trend
does stand out where the more education that a worker attains, the lower the
turnover rate businesses experience from said educational classes.
Race/Ethnicity — Whites account for around 80 percent of
Utah’s labor force. The Asian community is small but slowly increasing in
share, and is also characterized with the lowest turnover rate and the highest
new-hire wages.
Gender — males comprise about 55 percent of Utah’s labor
force. The female share of 45 percent is higher than the national average.
Roughly 35 percent of working females work part-time compared to 15 percent for
males. Therefore, female new-hire wages are considerably lower than male
new-hire wages. (Note: employer reporting into the unemployment insurance
system is not hourly wage rate reporting but instead total calendar quarter
wages paid. Therefore, calculations can only be made upon total quarterly
wages, and part-time employment weakens this measure).
As for the various counties in the Wasatch Front South region,
here are some labor highlights:
Salt Lake County:
- The largest industry group by employment in Salt Lake County is professional and business services. While it has consistently been the largest, it has gradually increased its share of total employment since the recession in 2009.
- In addition to size, the business services industry also happens to be one of the most dynamic and has the most churn, due to the inclusion of temporary staffing agencies.
- Turnover rates fell significantly in the last recession as job opportunities dried up and employees remained with their companies. Conversely, turnover rates have been on a steady tread upward in the last few years as workers have seized new job opportunities.
- The trends mentioned under statewide highlights regarding age, education, race and gender are mirrored in Salt Lake County.
Tooele County:
- The largest industry group by employment in Tooele County is retail/wholesale trade. Of these nearly 1,900 jobs, 1,740 are in retail trade which includes general merchandise and grocery stores.
- The transportation/warehousing/utilities industry share of total employment nearly doubled in the last 10 years. This growth is being driven by the warehousing and storage industry which now employs nearly 1,000 workers.
- Professional/Business Services has seen its share of total employment decline by a third in the last five years. These losses are primarily in the waste treatment and disposal industry, which lost nearly 1,000 jobs from 2012 to 2015.
