Although Tooele County’s unemployment rate remains slightly higher than the state average, the county’s 3.5 percent rate for December 2017 is in the full employment range, according to a Department of Workforce Services economist.
The statewide unemployment rate for December 2017 was 3.1 percent. The national unemployment rate was 4.1 percent for the same time period.
“You see in that the unemployment in Tooele County for December 2016 and 2017 are the same that the county is reaching full employment,” said Cory Stahle, Department of Workforce Services regional economist.
Full employment doesn’t mean 100-percent employment, but it is an employment rate low enough that most of the people who are unemployed are in transition as they change jobs, according to Stahle.
During 2017 the county’s unemployment rate started out at 3.5 percent in January and rose to 3.8 percent for May, June, July and August, then it started to drop, eventually returning to 3.5 percent for December, according preliminary job data for December 2017.
The increase in the unemployment rate in the summer months in Tooele County was due to an increase in the labor force as the result of students graduating from college that entered the job market, rather than the result of layoffs or other adverse economic conditions, according to Stahle.
With a labor force of 31,887 in December 2017 — up from 31,011 in December 2016 — Tooele County had 30,767 employed workers and 1,120 people looking for work at the end of 2017.
Low unemployment generally brings higher wages as employers compete for workers.
With only two quarters of wage information for 2017 currently available, Tooele County is starting to see an increase in the average monthly wage after experiencing a decline in wages following the loss of high paying jobs after the closure of Deseret Chemical Depot, according to Stahle.
In the fourth quarter of 2016, the average monthly wage in Tooele County was $3,276. The average monthly wage for the first and second quarters of 2017 were $3,308 and $3,331, respectively.
Tooele County ended 2017 with 16,106 non-farm jobs in December 2017, compared to 16,092 jobs in December 2916, a 0.1 percent increase.
Tooele County’s average monthly non-farm job growth in 2017 was 1.3 percent, compared to 5.3 percent in 2016. Statewide, jobs grew by an average of 3.1 percent in 2017.
Tooele County’s lower job growth rate is not indicative of the county’s overall healthy economy, according Stahle.
Numbers alone, especially one data point, don’t always tell an accurate story, he said.
For instance, looking at Tooele County’s job numbers, the county experienced a growth of as many as 400 project-based workers in the information services field, followed by a 400 job loss the following month when the project they were working on was complete, Stahle said.
Stahle referred to Tooele County’s overall economy as “good.”
A DWS report authored by Mark Knold, senior and supervising economist for DWS, and using data from 2011 to 2016, placed Tooele County’s job profile, based on an analysis of short and long term job growth, in the “improving” category and near the border line to “expanding.”
The same report shows Tooele County in the “expanding” category for labor force growth and relatively high on a scale that measures diversity in jobs.
2018 should continue to be a good time to look for a job. With unemployment rates in the full employment range, employers will be working hard to fill jobs, according to Stahle.
With a large percent of commuters, Tooele County’s labor force depends on the Salt Lake market for jobs. The Salt Lake job market is expected to continue to grow at a moderate rate, which should continue to be a positive influence on Tooele County’s unemployment rate, Stahle said.
The county’s 3.5-percent unemployment rate for December 2017 places the county near the middle of Utah’s 29 counties for the last month of the year in unemployment. There are 15 counties with a December 2017 unemployment rate the same or higher than Tooele County’s unemployment rate for December 2017. The highest unemployment rate for December 2017 is found in Wayne County at 6.9 percent. The county with the lowest unemployment rate for last month of 2017 was Cache County at 2.7 percent.