It’s no secret that Americans are anxious, divided and frustrated, but we still have many reasons to feel emboldened and hopeful. William Falk, Time magazine’s current editor-in-chief, wrote an end-of-year letter dated Dec. 31, 2021, summarizing the year. He ended with a reminder that the world also felt dark 80 years ago during World War II, at the end of 1941. However, that generation refused to surrender and eventually won the war. A Look at History In their book The Second Machine Age, Rick Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee analyzed the wages for full-time, full-year U.S. male workers between 1963 and 2008. They classified workers by educational attainment, from advanced degrees to high school dropouts. All the groups had increased prosperity 19631973; wages stagnated 1973-1982. In 1982, the information age began to reward education. Those rewards resulted in highly technical or specialized educations prospering, but not everyone received the same rewards. To analyze the housing shortage, we can look at the Federal Housing Finance Agency Housing Price Index (1977-2020). By far, the worst drop during that period was a 12.1% drop during the Great Recession. However, home appreciation for 2020 was at 28.3%. (The previous highs were 20.1% around 1979, 18.3% around 1994, and 17.2% around 2006.) The housing crisis is not the first time supply has outpaced demand, but shortages over the last decade have accumulated. Until 2017, there was a discrepancy between dwelling units and household formations. People formed more households than they built residences. Since then, Utah has been working to close the gap by building more residences. According to UtahRealEstate.com records from 2000 on, residential units had a median number of days on the market of 87 days in 2011. By the end of July 2021, the median was only 6 days. The pandemic prompted the Great Resignation, especially among boomers. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, being close to retirement age and having the wealth to retire early has allowed boomers to retire earlier than expected. “I-We-I” describes what has happened in the U.S. between 1880 and 2020. Author and political scientist Robert D. Putnam examined individualism and cooperation against four trends (economic, political, social and cultural). Individualism was prevalent at the beginning of that period, followed by increased cooperation until the Eisenhower presidency. After that, though, cooperation began dropping again. Although individualism benefits personal freedom and innovation, it can also cause inequities that increase social strife. In 2020, the U.S. Census Bureau identified Utah’s 18.4% change, 2010-2020, as the fastest-growing increase of any state in the country. A third of that growth is in Utah County, followed by 15.9% in Salt Lake County. In the 2020-2021 period, Utah County’s population grew by 2.9%. Salt Lake City’s population grew by 0.8%. Numerically and politically, Utah’s power is shifting south. In terms of job growth, the U.S. has had three recessions since January 2000 and October 2021: one in July 2001, the Great Recession and a pandemic recession in April 2020. Business in Utah is very different from business elsewhere. Utah has outperformed the U.S. on employment even during severe downturns and snapped back fast. December 2019-December 2021, four states had positive job growth: Utah (3.7%), Idaho (2.3%), Texas (1.0%) and Arizona (0.7%). Overall, the U.S. had a 1.8% job decline during the same period. The following table from the Utah Department of Workforce Services shows that Utah’s job growth or losses were concentrated in 10 industries: Industry Job Change Percentage Construction +13,600 12.4 Financial activity +6,000 6.6 Manufacturing +7,900 5.8 Trade, transportation and utilities +13,900 4.89 Professional and business services +7,800 3.5 Education and health services +5,600 2.7 Information +500 1.3 Government +1,800 0.7 Leisure and hospitality -4,800 -3.1 Mining -800 -8.1 A Conversation with Natalie Gochnour, Chief Economist for the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce Susan Morgan, The newsLINK Group, LLC 28
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