Utah Employers, Employment and Wages by Size, 2013

The Utah Department of Workforce Services compiles quarterly employment and wage data for non-agricultural employers in Utah. Data is maintained at the establishment level (e.g., store, plant, or other type of permanent worksite facility). Since these establishments are assigned an industry and county code, their employment and wage data can be aggregated into common industry and county groupings for analysis purposes.

Employment and wage data for Utah’s non-agricultural employers are categorized in this publication by employment size for the month of March in each of the designated years. Grouping data by this criterion provides a useful tool to analyze the characteristics of Utah employers. For example, general trends of the size of Utah employers and employment concentrations by employer size class can be observed. Wage levels for large, medium, and small firms can also be evaluated.

In this publication, data is presented for both establishments and firms. The term "establishment" is generally defined as a specific physical worksite for an employer. For most employers, this is the actual street location at which business is conducted. For others, with no permanent worksite (such as salespeople, factory representatives, or distributors) it is the location from which they conduct their business (sometimes even residences).

For an overview of this publication and a look at your county, click here.

Small-town Papers Alive and Well in Utah

While there are days, production Mondays usually, when he might fantasize about its demise, Bill Boyle, editor and publisher of the San Juan Record, is proud to say the paper's popularity is as strong as ever.

Eighteen years ago, when he left his job as a banker in Seattle and moved back to his hometown to buy its weekly newspaper, the print circulation was about 2,000.

Eighteen years later, it's still about 2,000, plus 400 online subscribers.

That doesn't mean there aren't headaches. Costs have gone up over the years while revenue —the classified ad line has shrunk a bit —has gone down, but in the Internet Age that is leveling big-city newspapers right and left, the small-town weeklies are hanging in there.

Helping prove the point was a book released nationally a year ago: "Emus Loose in Egnar: Big Stories from Small Towns," written by NPR's Judy Muller.


Muller crisscrossed the "blue roads" of the country, visiting weeklies from coast to coast. When she was finished, she wrote, "This just in: journalism is not dead. It is alive and kicking in small towns all across America thanks to the editors of weekly newspapers who, for very little money and a fair amount of aggravation, keep on telling it like it is."

One of those editors she profiled was Bill Boyle of the San Juan Record.

Muller praised Boyle's diligence as an editor and detailed the delicate balance he had to walk as a reporter and community member when the Indian artifacts bust decimated San Juan County three years ago.

At first, back before the Internet complicated everything, he could concentrate just on running the paper. Now he wears many more hats. But if the economic realities for newspapers have changed, even for weeklies, the content and popularity of the San Juan Record hasn't.

"The paper is still the community gathering spot," he says. "People still look for it in their mailbox. They still want the local flavor, they want to disagree. Where else are you going to read about a controlled burn that goes out of control? I don't think that will end up in the Wall Street Journal."

And out here in the country, away from Craigslist and eBay, people still advertise their real estate and job openings in the classifieds. Deseret News

Small Private Sector Employers Dominate the Southeast Utah Employment Landscape

Evaluating employment in Utah according to firm size provides a deeper understanding of who employs Utah’s workforce, which in turn can provide an interesting perspective into how different size firms operate in any economic environment. Here, definitions of small, medium, and large firms are provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics: small is any business that employs 1-49 individuals; medium businesses employ 50-499 individuals; large firms employ at least 500 individuals.

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At the state level, 95 percent of private sector firms are small employers and are responsible for 35 percent of all private sector employment in the state. On the other hand, while large employers represent only less than one percent of all private sector firms in Utah (0.3 percent to be exact), these large firms are responsible for 30 percent of total employment in the state. To what extent may this be the case in other areas of the state? Do large employers dominate the landscape outside of the large metropolitan areas?

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In the Castle Country Economic Service Area (comprised of Emery and Carbon counties), for example, 82 percent of private sector employers are small firms. Thirteen percent are mid-size firms and five percent are large firms. While just five percent businesses are large firms, these five percent are responsible for one in five private sector jobs in the Castle Country region. This is more or less in line with state-level breakdown.

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In the Southeast ESA (Grand and San Juan Counties), 89 percent of private sector employers are small firms, 7 percent are mid-size firms, and just fewer than 4 percent are large firms. Interestingly, whereas large private sector employers were responsible for 20 percent of employment in Castle Country (or 30 percent at the state level), large employers in the Southeast region are responsible for just 5 percent of total private sector employment. In the Southeast, the small employer clearly dominates, employing over 70 percent of total private sector employees. In fact, firms that employ between 25 and 49 employees, on a twelve-year average, make up just under half of all private sector employment in the Southeast region.

Interested in the dynamics of employer size in your region? The upcoming 2012-13 Winter Edition of Local Insights will highlight these and other details regarding employment by firm size.