Salt Lake City ranked sixth best city in nation for jobs for college graduates

Salt Lake City ranked sixth best city in nation for jobs for college graduates

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SALT LAKE CITY — One job search website has ranked Salt Lake City as the sixth best city in the nation for job growth.

The website Ziprecuiter.com — which describes itself as a job-search site — lists Salt Lake City as the sixth best city in the nation for recent college graduates to find work in.

A big area of job growth in the city comes from tech companies, which have seen such a large boom in Utah that CNBC called the metropolitan area from Ogden to Provo a "high-tech mecca" that "rises to rival Silicon Valley."

“I feel like I’ve already got my dream job right out of school,” said Steve Jensen, a recent BYU graduate and now a software engineer at Instructure — a Utah-based company that designs learning management programs for schools and businesses.

He got the job after doing an internship at the company before even starting his senior year. “When I went back to school for my senior year, I wasn’t worried about anything,” Jensen said, “I already had a job lined up.”

Shelby Fitzpatrick is another recent graduate hired by Instructure. She focused on retail in school but said she quickly learned technology has more to offer. “Once you get in, the opportunities are kind of endless as far as growth, especially in the tech industry,” she said.

Both Jensen and Fitzpatrick are examples of an industry that continues to grow in Salt Lake City’s economy. Instructure says they added about 250 jobs in 2016, and are preparing to add the same amount this year.

Jeff Weber, vice president of People and Places at Instructure, explains part of what makes Utah such an attractive place for companies. “Cost of talent and cost of living is lower than other areas like the Bay Area,” he explains. “So we have an advantage there I think.”

In fact, Utah is experiencing so much growth, that companies are having a hard time filling all their open positions. “It’s challenging to find people with the skill set we’re looking for all the time with as many opening as we have,” Weber said.

KSL contacted the Governor’s office about the ranking, and they also claimed that Utah is also ranked number one in the nation in terms of job growth.

Contributor: Freeman Stevenson

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