Utah economic performance continues to rank as the nation's strongest, a position held throughout 2007. It is expected that some modest slowing of the states economy will occur in 2008. Utah will still likely rank among the top handful of net fob creators during the 2008 year.
The Utah economy added more than 52,000 net jobs during the resent 12 month period. The states job creation has slowed somewhat in recent months, it remains more than three times stronger than the current U.S. job creation pace.
Strong Utah employment growth of the past 3-4 years has led to lower labor availability, contributing to major chanllenges to ge fully staffed for Utah emplyers of all shapes and sizes according to Jeff Thredgold, Insight Vol 11 No 1/Winter 2008.
There has been a surge of new residents since 2005 which provides work while boosting the demand for Utah housing.
It is expected in 2008 that there will be solid growth with impressive but slowing job creation, extremely tight labor availability, and a softer housing market seem to be unavoidable for this year. In contrast, the state's commercial real estate sector is doing very well. The states long term economic potential? Second to none.