From Deseret News archives:
Davis grows, but its wages are shrinking
County officials trying to find ways to create better-paying jobs
The study, released Thursday, profiles Davis County and its 15 cities and is designed to give officials a picture of how the county's economy has changed over the past 15 years.
Between 1990 and 2006, Davis County increased in population from 188,000 to 286,000 — the second-highest growth rate on the Wasatch Front, behind Utah County.
To plan for that growth, the Davis County Community and Economic Development agency convened the Davis Economic Advisory Council, made up of local government officials and business leaders, to create a countywide economic strategy.
Thursday's release of the University of Utah study at the Davis Conference Center was the advisory council's kickoff. Over the next few months, the council will meet to figure out a way to balance community values with the need for more jobs.
While four Davis County cities saw the number of their jobs more than double between 1990 and 2005, the county sees 45 percent of its work force leaving the county every day for work.
And wages have been on the decline. In 1990, wages in the county were 4 percent above the state average, but by 2005 had fallen to 1 percent below.
That trend worries the county manager of economic development, Kent Sulser. Many jobs in the county are in retail.
"If you boil it down, it's a lot of retail," he said, adding that retail jobs are necessary but they generally don't pay living wages.
According to the study, which Sulser's department commissioned earlier this year, the decline in wages happened because the structure of the county's economy changed.
Out of all jobs not related to agriculture, the government sector share, led mostly by Hill Air Force Base, has dropped from 36 percent to 25 percent in the past 15 years. Manufacturing dropped from 15 percent to 11 percent.
Those two sectors tend to be higher-paying, and their decline makes Sulser call for more offices and more manufacturing in the county.
Developers in Davis County have heard that call. Three major projects in the county — Midtown Village at Legend Hills in Clearfield, Village on Main Street in Centerville and Eaglewood Village in North Salt Lake — are mixed-use developments being pursued by different developers.
Each seeks to combine office, residential and retail uses in one project so people can have higher wages and live close to home.
The Davis County study says that the county's population growth, without accompanying job growth, has made for a nightmarish commute twice a day into and out of Salt Lake and Weber counties.
Davis County is second in the state for workers commuting out of the county to work. Morgan County is first, with nearly 65 percent, the study says.
The jam-packed Interstate 15 was the impetus for two $600 million-plus projects: Legacy Parkway and the FrontRunner commuter rail, both of which are located mostly in Davis County. They are expected to help reduce periodic gridlock when they are finished.
E-mail: jdougherty@desnews.com
