Cache Valley Bank acquires eight branches in central, southern Utah

Logan-based Cache Valley Bank will acquire eight AmericanWest Bank branches in central and southern Utah, with the transaction expected to be completed in the third fiscal quarter of this year.

The banks have entered into a definitive agreement, and the acquisition is subject to regulatory approval and all other customary conditions of closing. The branches included are Price, Fairview, Mt. Pleasant, Nephi, Loa, St. George and two in Ephraim.

The sale will also allow AmericanWest Bank to reshape its service area in Utah, focusing on serving the communities along the Interstate 15 corridor from North Salt Lake to Utah County, according to a joint news release. Herald Journal

Moab‐Salt Lake bus route on hold

Last year Pocatello, Idaho-based shuttle service Salt Lake Express won a federal grant to provide twice-a-day shuttle service from Moab to Salt Lake City, with stops in Price and Blanding.

But the funding has been withdrawn because the company did not meet requirements outlined in the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), according to Kathy Pope, sales grant manager for Salt Lake Express.

Utah Department of Transportation spokesman Kevin Kitchen said it’s an unfortunate situation. Salt Lake Tribune

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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.

Return on Knowledge in the Southeast Service Area - Local Insights article

Benjamin Franklin once said, “If a man empties his purse into his head, no one can take it from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the highest return.” For this inaugural issue of Local Insights, the Department of Workforce Services (DWS) decided to analyze the Southeastern region of Utah’s economy through the lens of education. When approaching an analysis like this, the usual questions instantly came to mind: Do more highly educated people necessarily make more money? What does the education profile look like for the various industries in the Castle Country and Southeast regions of Utah? Which industries employ the highest proportion of degreed workers? The aim of this article is to answer these and other questions, which will hopefully allow us to gain some interesting insights into the educational profile of the East-Southeast as well as the effects of education on workers in the area. As the article progresses, “Southeast” will refer to Carbon, Emery, Grand and San Juan counties.

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Report: Abandon Utah's oil shale, tar sands

As Gov. Gary Herbert prepares today to stage the first of four statewide forums on Utah’s energy future, a Rocky Mountain environmental group has some advice: Forget oil shale and tar sands. Western Resource Advocates issued a 38-page report Tuesday on the energy and water inefficiency of either potential fuel source. The title: Fossil Foolishness: Utah’s Pursuit of Tar Sands and Oil Shale. The Boulder, Colo.-based legal and policy group commissioned a Boston University geographer to analyze the energy return on investment for oil shale. He determined that most research indicates that, at best, making fuel from the rock would generate twice the energy content of what it takes to produce. That compares to a 20-to-1 ratio or better for petroleum.

Additionally, the advocates insist, these potential fuel sources are too polluting and water intensive to win a place in Herbert’s vision for a clean-energy economy. They argue they also would require too many public subsidies to meet his test for market solutions. The Western Resource Advocates report cites state and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation estimates that Utah will exhaust its remaining share of Colorado River water by about 2020 — even without giving over any of it to new energy development. Utah’s potential for developing 634,000 barrels of oil a day by mining and then cooking oil shale would require somewhere between 90,000 and 150,000 acre-feet of water. An acre-foot, roughly 326,000 gallons, is about enough to supply two households for a year. While not armed with as much research about Utah’s tar sands, the environmental group believes that potential energy source faces similar efficiency issues. Salt Lake Tribune

New County-Level Personal Income Data Available

The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has released estimates of personal income at the county level for 2008 based on newly available source data. The county estimates released today complete the successively more detailed series of data releases depicting the geographic distribution of the nation’s personal income for 2008.

The annual estimates (1969-2008) of local area personal income have been revised to incorporate the comprehensive revision of the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA). Comprehensive revisions, which are undertaken every 4 to 5 years, are an important part of BEA’s regular process for improving and modernizing its accounts to keep pace with the ever-changing U.S. economy. Bureau of Economic Analysis