Utah's job machine kept humming along in May, and a state economist says that "cruise control situation" is likely to continue for the rest of the year.

Mark Knold, chief economist for the state Department of Workforce Services, said the Rocky Mountain region is the best-performing economic area in the country, and Utah is at the top of the regional heap.

"If you're going to be stuck in a rut, this is a great rut," Knold said Tuesday. "There are states, like Michigan, that are stuck in a recession rut. They can't get new jobs. They keep losing jobs."

Such is not the case in Utah, which posted 4.5 percent growth in the number of nonfarm wage and salaried jobs for May, according to a Workforce Services report out Tuesday. That level of employment growth has been steady all year and is well above the state's 3.3 percent annual average since 1950.

Utah's unemployment rate also held at 2.5 percent in May, unchanged from April and down 0.5 percentage points from May 2006. Approximately 33,100 Utahns were unemployed last month, the Workforce Services report said. The national unemployment rate was 4.5 percent last month.

The job-growth rate means Utah's economy has created about 54,000 new jobs in the past year, raising total wage and salary employment in the state to 1.25 million.

The entire U.S. economy has added 1.9 million new jobs since May 2006, for a growth rate of 1.4 percent. Utah's new jobs in that time frame represent about 2.8 percent of all new jobs added in the United States, from a state that comprises less than 1 percent of all U.S. jobs.

But Knold said the nation's slower job-growth rate is good news for Utah.

"The fact that the U.S. economy is just so-so actually helps us, because it gives us labor," he said. "In the economy we're running with right now, our biggest potential hurdle would be not getting enough workers. ... It really helps us when other parts of the country have excess bodies, and they go looking for work and land in Utah in some cases."

Part of the national economic slowdown is due to an overbuilt U.S. housing market. Utah does not have that problem statewide, Knold said, although the St. George area is seeing some adjustments in its housing economy.

"(On the Wasatch Front) we built more houses in the last three years than we ever have, but that was completely in response to an age boom. ... In the 1980s, we had another baby boom, and they have come of age where they're out forming households and buying their first houses. Our housing permit run-up was demographic-based."

As the home-building frenzy cools, the financial activities sector could slow significantly, the Workforce Services report said. But construction will continue to be a driving force for job creation, as the state added 14,500 construction jobs during the last year.