Utah’s tech industry — colloquially known as Silicon Slopes — saw some high-profile layoffs in 2023. Most recently, the Provo-based online retailer NuSkin laid off 5% of its staff, and Jane.com, another online retailer out of Lehi, shut down completely. Back in October, survey company Qualtrics (based in Provo and Seattle) cut 780 jobs.
Some have taken it as a signal that the days of high growth in Silicon Slopes are behind us, but Utah’s job numbers seem to disagree.
“There was a very fast pace of hiring that had gone on in 2020 and into 2021 and early 2022,” said Mark Knold, chief economist at the Utah Department of Workforce Services. This was largely due to low interest rates and increased demand during the pandemic.
Now that interest rates are up, growth has slowed.
“I think the bar for getting financing is just a lot higher and so you’re having to make your cash last longer,” said Sunny Washington, co-founder of Utah Tech Leads, a professional association.
But that doesn’t mean all growth has stopped. According to Workforce Services, there hasn’t been a decrease in jobs for computer scientists in the state. Many jobs at tech companies fall in other categories like management and sales, and overall Utah’s unemployment is low, which is indicative of tech doing well, too.
And statewide job growth has only slowed, albeit slightly, from what state economists say is a normal 3% growth to “2.5% job growth if you average the whole year,” said department spokesperson Jared Mendenhall.
A slowing economy was the intended result of rising interest rates nationally as the Federal Reserve was trying to tame inflation. Knold doesn’t expect growth in Silicon Slopes to stay slow for long.
“Now is it gonna go back to the kind of pace that we saw during the pandemic? No, I don’t see that,” he said. “But getting back to the pre-covid 3 percent-ish or so,” in the next few years seems possible.
Sunny Washington said she expects more growth in Silicon Slopes in 2024 as well – particularly for companies based around artificial intelligence.
“I’ve heard others describe it as AI having a bit of a printing press moment,” she said. “For me, this is just as exciting as when we got the internet.”
