Utah’s November unemployment holds steady
Dec 22, 2023, 8:37 AM | Updated: 9:08 am
Eloise Schmitt serves lunch to Emma Larsen and her father, Shawn, at Gourmandise in Salt Lake City on Thursday, April 8, 2021. (Laura Seitz/Deseret News)
(Laura Seitz/Deseret News)
SALT LAKE CITY — The jobs report for November came out Friday morning and shows an unemployment rate of 2.8%. This is a slight increase over last month’s 2.7% according to the Department of Workforce Services.
Nationally, unemployment sits at 3.7% which is down from September’s 3.9%.
Deputy Director for the Department of Workforce Services, Nate McDonald joined Utah’s Morning News to go over this month’s report.
“We came out at with a 2% job growth. That’s over 34,700 jobs that we’ve added since November of 2022. So, we’re ending the year standing steady with our job growth right at 2%. It’s slowed down over the past several months, but 2% for the year is still doing well considering where things have been,” said McDonald.
McDonald noted the one-tenth percent uptick in unemployment.
“But if you look at where we were before the pandemic, and here we are now with things kind of moderating over the last several months, to be coming to the end of the year, with a 2.8% unemployment. That’s great. Even though there’s been some swings, it’s still we’re still ending the year really strong.”
According to McDonald, the national job growth is just slightly slower than here in Utah.
“We are still doing well with our industries. Eight of our 10 industries are seeing job growth,” he said.
“The two [industries] that haven’t seen growth is the trade [and] transportation and utilities. They saw over 3,000 job losses. But let’s just put that in perspective,” McDonald continued.
“Back during the pandemic, trade transportation utilities was at the top for so long, and it just was running so hot, so many jobs, so much happening in that industry, that really were just seeing things moderate and come back down to a level of normalcy.”
The travel and leisure industry remains on top and is expected to do so for awhile.
McDonald said, “…overall good news, we’ll see where things go and 2024.”
