Utah unemployment hit 26-year high in March; job losses slowing

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah's job-loss toll continues to mount, although it has slowed down some, and unemployment reached a 26-year high in March.

The state's nonfarm wage and salaried job count has shrunk by 1.9 percent over the past year, with about 22,500 jobs removed from the Utah economy since March 2009.

That brings Utah's wage and salary employment to 1.17 million, according to numbers released Thursday by the Utah Department of Workforce Services, using U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

The state's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 7.2 percent in March, an increase of a 0.1 percentage point from February. A year ago, unemployment in the Beehive State stood at 6.4 percent. Nationally, unemployment stands at 9.7 percent.

The report said that Utah last saw an unemployment rate of 7.2 percent in early 1982 and again in early 1984 as the nation entered into and then emerged from that recession.

The most important number is the job loss, said Lecia Langston, a Workforce Services economist, who said the good news is that it continues to get smaller.

"That's a good sign, although we have not gotten to growth yet," Langston said.

Job-loss and unemployment figures don't always tell the same story because while job loss counts literal jobs lost, unemployment counts solely those who are actively looking for work. There are many reasons someone who doesn't have a job might leave the job hunt and thus the unemployment pool, Mark Knold, the department's chief economist, recently told the Deseret News.

Typically during recovery from recession, unemployment numbers go higher because many of those people who stopped searching for jobs start again when the economy begins to improve, he said.

One of the best harbingers that recovery is beginning for people seeking jobs is that "temp agencies are starting to come back," said Langston. "That's one of the first signs you get of a recovery."

She said hiring temps is a prelude to eventually opening up full-time jobs.

Langston noted that national unemployment appears to have peaked, and she believes "we're pretty close to a peak ourselves, based on that."

The report said the only Utah industries that didn't lose jobs were health care, education and government. The deepest losses were in construction, manufacturing, professional and business services and trade.

e-mail: lois@desnews.com