“It’s not your grandmother’s county anymore. It’s not your grandfather’s county anymore.” With these words, Natalie Gochnour, director of the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, set the tone for the Utah Valley Chamber of Commerce 2017 Executive Summit Monday at Sundance Mountain Resort. “Growth will be your constant companion. You are going to change,” Gochnour told the Utah County leaders gathered to discuss Utah County’s biggest issues among business and development. “You have a choice. How do you react to that change? Do you react to it by letting it happen, by just watching it? …. Or do you really [...]

Daggett and Garfield counties may be on opposite sides of the state, but they have one thing in common — more than half of their jobs (54 percent) are provided by private leisure and hospitality companies. It’s not that much different in Grand, Kane and Summit counties, where upwards of 40 percent of all private-sector jobs are related to tourism. Even along the Wasatch Front, the leisure and hospitality industry accounts for almost 10 percent of all jobs in Salt Lake and Utah counties, slightly more than in Davis and Weber counties.

BOULDER, Garfield County — If the boundaries of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument are shrunk, Blake Spalding says it will be the hammer likely to nail the doors shut on her nationally recognized restaurant. After all, the Hell's Backbone Grill is named for the narrow, 9,000-foot elevation spine along the monument's Aquarius Plateau and in a biblical sense, the geologic formation begat the commercial enterprise. "In my mind I try to think of what a tourist would think, that if it is reduced, it is damaged," Spalding said. "It could be a public relations nightmare for Utah tourism. I don't [...]

"It's time for action, time for doing. The time for talking is past," he said. Herbert then challenged rural leaders to identify their community problems, the hindrances to getting them solved and craft a plan of action and bring it to Salt Lake City for a meeting to hammer out an "all hands on deck" approach to revitalizing rural Utah. "We have a high degree of know-how. We have a low degree of do-how," Herbert said, which needs to change. When the governor took questions and comments in response, Carbon County Commissioner Jake Mellor pointed out the two large hindrances [...]

The hard-driving forces that have made St. George and the rest of Washington County one of the fastest-growing populations in the U.S. are expected to continue for the foreseeable future, ballooning the area to more than 500,000 people over the next 50 years, according to new state population projections released this week. […]

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — New data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows Utah is experiencing a growing wave of diversity and Asian and multiracial population are growing faster than others. The state's Asian and multiracial populations both grew by 6 percent between 2015 and 2016 — faster than any other racial or ethnic group, according to the data released Thursday. More than 1 in 5 Utah residents is now a racial or ethnic minority, including more than 1 in 4 under the age of 18, the census bureau said. "These trends are cumulative and ongoing and irreversible," said Pam [...]

The United States is growing more diverse, and forecasts for Utah match changes seen across the country. Minorities now account for 21 percent of Utah's population, compared with 19 percent in 2010. In short, minority populations are growing faster than white populations, prompting local demographer Pam Perlich to label these differences as "the new Utah." "Since 2010, Utah's minority population grew by 20.3 percent, while the white population increased by a much smaller 8 percent." That is a distinct difference. Perlich continued, "These trends are cumulative, ongoing and irreversible."

SALT LAKE CITY — New research from the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute indicates the Utah economy has largely benefited because of globalization. The report also shows that the value of the state's annual exports have climbed above $13 billion. The study, titled "What has been the impact of globalization on Utah?" was authored by Jim Wood, Ivory-Boyer senior fellow at the Gardner Institute. He said the impact of globalization for Utah has been widespread and generally positive, with a major reason for Utah’s international success attributed to the many products locally manufactured that have been largely immune to "offshoring." [...]

Editor's note: A. Scott Anderson serves as co-chairman of the Gardner Institute Advisory Board A robust public policy debate is occurring in Utah, in Congress, across the country and throughout the world regarding globalization — is it a boon or bane for the economy? It’s a very good question. And it’s driving a lot of discussion over immigration, populism and “America first” attitudes. Do such things as international trade agreements, offshoring and the unrestricted flow of goods and services across national boundaries help or hurt Utah’s economy? Answering that question sounds like an ideal job for the University of Utah’s [...]

As a crowd of Wasatch Front officials listened, economist Juliette Tennert on Wednesday described trains and buses as vital to solve congestion and pollution as the area's population will double in a few decades. But there's a big problem. "We have this challenge of how are we going to pay for it," said Tennert, director of economics and public policy at the University of Utah's Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.