Scanning the indicators for economically successful states, any objective observer would need to pause on Utah.
As Utah Foundation recently outlined in part of the 2018 Economic Report to the Governor, the state stacks up very favorably in national and regional comparisons. Looking at 2013 through 2016, the most recent three-year period with complete data, Utah Foundation found that our state ranked second in the nation for GDP growth, with an eye-opening annual growth rate of 3.9 percent. To put that in perspective, the U.S. average was 2.3 percent, and the Mountain States regional average was 2.6 percent. Meanwhile, Utah’s median household income was $65,977 in 2016, 12th highest in the nation.
The employment growth rate was 2.6 percent from 2013 through 2016, compared to 1.8 percent nationally. Utah’s growth was second in the Mountain States region only to Arizona’s 2.9 percent growth. For 2016, the state’s unemployment rate averaged 3.4 percent, eighth lowest in the nation and significantly lower than the national unemployment rate (4.9 percent).
