continued on page 14 We have a short-term opportunity to bridge the skills gap by focusing on workforce training, but workforce development will continue to play a role in our long-term prosperity. finding enough qualified people. Unfortunately, the pandemic has caused a drop-off in students moving from secondary education to higher education. But as a state or as an economy, we can’t afford to have a whole segment of our population hit the pause button for a couple of years. Many companies struggle to hire people with the necessary qualifications even though 50,000 people are unemployed. That is why we need short-term and long-termworkforce training. We have a short-term opportunity to bridge the skills gap by focusing on workforce training, but workforce development will continue to play a role in our long-term prosperity. What do you think the lingering effects of the pandemic will be on small businesses? Small businesses are 90% of Utah’s economy. They quantifiably form the state’s backbone and engine. The PPP loans have helped many small businesses keep their doors open from the beginning of the pandemic. The Salt Lake Chamber also created a program, Stay Safe to Stay Open, and the state asked the chamber to take it across the state. The chamber also had a triple takeout challenge to support local restaurants by getting takeout three times a week. (For my family, my wife suggested we should get takeout six times a week.) In terms of lingering effects, success in the current environment has been defined by surviving. Businesses had to innovate and adapt. Many companies had already planned to make changes, but the pandemic sped up their plans. For example, one of the downtown restaurants had already been talking and thinking about making a new business line of prepackaged meals that would be available online. They had to act on that when the pandemic started. Howmany small businesses have closed in Utah as a result of COVID compared with the national picture? Is it as high as one in four? About a third of the businesses we’ve talked to have said they closed at least one location and consolidated. But look at the good news: more than 50,000 businesses received PPP loans. Zions Bank and Mountain America Credit Union led the nation in the number of loans they closed, respectively, for banks or credit unions. How do you think Governor Cox’s emphasis on rural Utah affects Salt Lake City? I don’t think economic success has to be a zero-sum game where one part of the state takes precedence over the other. Instead, think of the economy as a garden. I can have a good garden, and my neighbor across the street can have one, too. Anyone who plants good seeds, provides them with soil, water and sunshine and tends the garden will have good results. You will see the right outcome if you do the right things, and if rural parts of the state achieve economic success, their success will not be at the expense of Salt Lake City or the Wasatch front. Do you have any suggestions for small businesses in 2022? 1. Every business needs to have a digital transformation strategy. The pandemic accelerated existing trends, and companies have had to move some things online that they’d already been thinking about. 13
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