Public Policy
The Gardner Institute provides data-driven, context-specific insights about public policy in Utah. We prepare in-depth quantitative and qualitative studies on key Utah issues in partnership with private-sector stakeholders and state and local government. Our research provides vital information decision-makers and the public use to help Utah prosper.
Insight: Unemployment Figures Revealed
By: Juliette Tennert, MS As we celebrate Labor Day, I thought I would shed a little light on one of the most-cited labor statistics – the unemployment rate. If you enjoy teasing economists, you’re probably familiar with the joke that if you ask three economists a question, you will get five different answers. We can’t help ourselves – we work in a world of copious data that is full of nuance! […]
Insight: 2 Utahs and the need for investment
By: Natalie Gochnour Originally published in The Deseret News While driving in downtown Salt Lake City this week I witnessed a vivid contrast. It was lunchtime and the city I love was teeming with life. A TRAX light-rail train rambled through traffic, a guy in a suit pedaled along on a lime green bike-share bicycle, construction workers labored in a new high rise, and lunch-hour pedestrian traffic filled the streets. As if to put punctuation on our growing and thriving urban center, I saw 20 or so rather large guys dressed in power-blue-and-maize outfits walking up State Street together. They[...]
Insight: Salt Lake City is earning a new title: 'Wall Street of the West'
By: Natalie Gochnour Originally published in the Deseret News Salt Lake City is now the second-largest Goldman Sachs office in the United States and the fourth-largest in the world. What was in 2000 a small regional operation has blossomed into a workforce of several thousand people and growing. With the workforce of Fidelity Investments, the Royal Bank of Scotland, Wells Fargo and other financial service companies, Utah’s capital city now rightly claims the title “Wall Street of the West.” The Utah economy is larger, stronger and more diversified, thanks to the growth in this important industry. […]
Insight: Pac-12 Football is a Win for the U and Utah
By: Dianne Meppen, BS As the University prepares for the big game with Michigan, I’m reminded of a research project I was involved in shortly after coming to work at the U – the Pac-12 Economic Impact Study. It was the University’s second year in the conference and the purpose of the research was to gauge the economic benefits of the decision to join the Pac-12 Conference. […]
Insight: Utah’s Apartment Construction Boom
By: James Wood The share of renter households is increasing in Utah creating the “tightest” rental market I’ve seen in my forty years of experience with the local housing market Ten years ago twenty six percent of all households in Utah were renters. By 2014 that share had grown to twenty-nine percent. This three percent swing in favor of rental housing produced an additional 27,000 renter households statewide in 2014, pushing the total of renter households to 261,000. […]