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Budget bill H.B. 348 hopes to incite companies to grow in Utah by providing them with an educated workforce to be used for staffing.

Utah Business

Budget bill H.B. 348 hopes to incite companies to grow in Utah by providing them with an educated workforce to be used for staffing.

New budget bill aims to attract companies to Utah (and staff them)

“It doesn’t matter how many companies we attract here because if we don’t have the workforce for those jobs then those companies will not succeed and ultimately they will stop coming,” says Governor Spencer Cox.

He’s talking about the H.B. 348 Economic Development Amendments bill which aims to attract new companies to Utah while ensuring that the people who live here have the training and skills needed to work for them. Ultimately, Cox says that Utah will succeed as a good-for-business state, not because we have a great incentive package, but because we have the best people. 

“We can be much smarter about where we’re putting those incentives trying to attract the right industries that will in turn have a multiplier effect on our economy and help people,” says Cox.

Investing in a highly skilled labor force

Though there isn’t a formalized list of industries the Governor hopes to target with the bill, there are industries earmarked as important for the state because GOED wants to grow the existing talent pool.  Northrop Grumman, for one, is in the process of creating 4,000 jobs to be filled by highly skilled labor. 

Energy is another sector were there is potential for investment. “We are one of the best locations in the entire world for solar,” says Dan Hemmery, executive director at GOED. “In southeast Utah  especially because it’s sunny all the time and it’s not too hot. That’s one of the requirements for optimal solar, and so not just traditional forms of energy and energy production but also future looking energy and energy production [have potential to grow in Utah.]”

Software, pharmaceuticals, and manufacturing are other growing industries across the Wasatch Front that could be slated for more development. Regarding manufacturing in particular, H.B. 348 will establish a commission for the Point of the Mountain development project and appropriates $28 million for infrastructure construction for the Utah Inland Port Authority. 

“What we will not be doing in this bill is saying which industries we are going to be targeting but what we are doing is changing the structure and consolidating a whole bunch of areas of government, reducing the size and scope of making this decision and having this committee that includes the government,” Cox says.

Investing in better infrastructure 

According to the Governor, unemployment in Utah was the fifth-lowest in the country in December 2020 at 3.6 percent, with year-over-job growth being second in the country and labor force participation nearing pre-pandemic levels. This puts Utah, along with Idaho, on track to be the only states in the country to return to net-positive year-over-job growth, showing that Utah is on a much better path towards economic recovery post-COVID-19 than the rest of the nation.

A major point of this remodel is that the Commission will aim to invest in the workforce and for the people of Utah. Talent Ready Utah, a workforce development program already in place, will become a sub-committee of the commission with the overall objective of further crossing agency lines within the government. 

According to Hemmert, this bill is the culmination of two or three years of work to realign economic development. The Commission will almost force collaboration among different agencies to share resources, and also plans to establish a 10-year economic development strategy.

“Rather than trying to import all this labor from out of state, and we’re happy for people to come in from out of state, but as much as possible let’s try to build it in house,” Hemmert says.

H.B. 348 will extend a deadline for GOED to establish a database to track information on certain reimbursement, development institutes, and community agencies. It will also support new business and skilled labor.

According to Hemmert, there are alot of elements that go into economic development and historically the sole purpose has only been on jobs or job growth. What also needs to be taken into consideration is congestion on roads, affordability of housing, managing that takes into account quality of life, and finding jobs that work for a long-term, forward thinking perspective.

“We want to focus on certain industries, we’re focused on certain growth in certain areas geographically. We want to be looking more off the Wasatch Front as possible, as much as we can,” says Hemmert. “And then we want to be balancing other quality of life elements… there are other factors beyond just jobs as we’re looking at economic development in the state of Utah.”