Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
- Utahns feel more optimistic about the economy than the national average.
- The consumer sentiment in Utah is 91.3, significantly higher than the U.S. average of 71.1.
- Utah's strong job growth and lower unemployment contribute to this positive outlook.
SALT LAKE CITY — Even as inflation swells and consumers feel the spike of goods increasing, Utahns generally feel better about their finances and the economy than people in other states.
In fact, the gap is fairly significant, according to the latest consumer sentiment survey from the University of Utah's Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.
The survey measured Utah's consumer sentiment at 91.3 in January, unchanged from December and just over 20 points higher than the consumer sentiments of Americans as a whole, which came in at 71.1.
Now, that gap may not be quite as big as it seems due to recent changes in how the University of Michigan gathers data for its national measure of consumer sentiment, explained Phil Dean, chief economist at the Gardner Institute.
"Part of that gap may just be the difference in a phone survey compared to an internet survey ... essentially you have some survey methodology differences that might account for part of the gap," Dean said.
More specifically, the University of Michigan in 2024 shifted its survey methodology from telephone collection to online collection using address-based mailer recruitment. Results of the concurrent testing showed an average reduction of 6.6 index points with the new methodology relative to the old methodology.
Still, that doesn't account for the entirety of the discrepancy.
"Even when we were using identical methodology, Utah very consistently continues higher than the rest of the U.S., meaning people here feel more optimistic about the economy than people across the U.S., overall," Dean said.
But what's the explanation for Utahns' positivity surrounding the economy staying steady despite rising prices for housing, food and energy?
To answer that, Dean points back to 2021.
"You see the decline in 2021, and those coincide with when we started to see inflation ramping up. I think there definitely is a tie between prices people see — especially the change in prices people see — and sentiment," Dean said.
Even early in 2024, Utah's consumer sentiment was lower than the rest of the U.S. before a spike in May 2024 that has only increased since.
"I suspect that the election probably played into that in the Utah number of thinking ... the party in control in D.C. is the same party in control here in Utah, so I suspect that's some of it," Dean said.
But he also thinks some of it can be attributed to what's happening "on the ground" in Utah's economy despite some of the challenges like inflation that still exist.
"As a state, we have strong economic momentum," Dean said.
There are numbers to back that up, too.
Utah's December 2024 unemployment rate came in at 3.5%, lower than the national rate of 4.1%, according to the Utah Department of Workforce Services employment summary.
Additionally, the state's economy added a cumulative 44,800 jobs since December 2023 bringing Utah's current job count (as of December 2024, the last time employment data for Utah was released) to 1,790,300.
"Our job growth rate is almost twice that of the nation's. People see opportunity here. They see growth here," Dean said.
But that doesn't mean things are perfect with the economy.
"Every individual household experiences the economy in different ways but I do think it's reflective of and consistent with Utah's strong economic performance, especially over the latter part of the year," Dean said.
The full survey can be found here.
