Utah job growth strong — for now

Utah's job growth continues to be strong, but weaknesses are creeping into the picture.

The Utah year-over-year job growth for nonfarm wage and salaried jobs in November was 4 percent — outpacing the state's long-term average of 33 percent per year since 1950 but slipping 0.3 percent from October's level.

Mark Knold, chief economist for the Utah Department of Workforce Services, noted that the slowdown has been expected for a while and is no cause for alarm.

"We are at an inflexion point, and by that I mean we've been kind of moving sideways throughout most of 2007. The growth rate has been at that 4 percent range, and we're moving off that now," Knold said. "That will come down throughout 2008. We're at the edge, so to speak, of the plateau. The question mark is how quickly we'll be coming off that thing going forward. I think we'll see a steady downward trend as we go through 2008."

The state has added 48,900 jobs in the past year, and Utah's 4 percent figure compares with a national growth rate of 1 percent.

Utah's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate held steady from October to November at 2.8 percent, compared to the also-repeated national rate of 4.7 percent and with Utah's 2.6 percent in November 2006. About 38,300

Utahns were unemployed last month, compared with 34,500 in November last year.

Knold said that he would have predicted last year that Utah's job growth going forward would be even lower than where it currently stands.

"We sustained that growth many, many months longer than we thought we would or could, the reason being the unemployment rate has been so low for a year and a half now. Down in this 2 percent range is territory we have not been to here. It's historic. You'd anticipate that with this low of a rate that we would run out of workers, but obviously we had a very strong in-migration last year to keep us fed with labor."

Troubles in the construction industry — due to mortgage and housing woes — will be the main monkey wrench thrown into the works during the next year, he predicted.

"Nonresidential housing is still going strong, and it looks like it's going strong and looks like it's going to continue to be strong throughout 2008, so you hope that nonresidential activity will help construction go into a soft landing instead of a hard crash," Knold said.

Most of the industry figures for November were about what he expected, with most holding even growth rates.