SALT LAKE CITY — With the latest U.S Jobs Report being released, FOX 13 News took a look at why Utah in all the right ways is bucking the national trend when it comes to unemployment and job growth.
Jared Mendenhall, a spokesperson for the Utah Department of Workforce Services told us, it’s no coincidence Utah’s unemployment and job growth numbers outpace the national numbers.
He said its due in large part to the population growth and a variety of industries.
And out of all the job sectors, health and education are seeing the most job growth.
“We saw 15,800 new jobs in that sector,” said Mendenhall. “Of course, construction, where we saw about 62 hundred new jobs, and then we saw 47 hundred new jobs in the general business. Also, another highlight of that latest jobs report is that we saw a rebound in leisure and hospitality.”
But not all is rosy. Mendenhall said job opportunities in the retail trade and the general merchandise store sectors have decreased, in part due to a result of people changing their buying habits.
“We have seen that the demand for workers declined over the past year, 18 months,” said Mendenhall. “The encouraging thing is that we've seen a lot of those workers reabsorbed into the economy and other sectors where we've remained, we've continued to keep that unemployment number low.”
In two weeks, we’ll get an update on the state’s job numbers.
July’s jobs report is scheduled to be released on August 15.
