New Dashboard Will Show Utah’s Economic Recovery
Sep 21, 2020, 6:26 PM | Updated: 8:49 pm
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – Much like the daily numbers we get on COVID cases, the Salt Lake Chamber believes businesses and consumers should have data on the state’s economic recovery. They say that way, business owners and consumers can have more power to choose how to move forward.
The new Roadmap to Recovery Dashboard will be updated monthly. It shows not only the unemployment rates by county, but which industries are seeing more people change jobs, bankruptcy rates, consumer spending, just to name a few.
“We’re providing economic information to the public, to business leaders, so they can make decisions and do things to actually get us back on track more quickly,” said Natalie Gochnour, Director, Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute
Unlike other recessions, Chamber leaders note that the pandemic has caused the economy to drop bigger and faster. The upside, they say, is that there’s more ability to guide the recovery, as businesses work to reopen more of their services safely.
“What we really want is for business owners to get data that they can use to guide their decisions,” said Derek Miller, CEO. “We as a Chamber of Commerce want to have that data so we can advocate for policies that are going to help in our economic recovery.”
That’s at least what the folks at the Salt Lake Chamber believe – enough so, that chamber partners have already donated over a hundred-thousand dollars to this online dashboard.
The good news is that there are already signs along the road, that Utah is on the right path.
“Our unemployment rate is less than half the national average, and currently stands as the lowest unemployment rate in the country,” Miller said.
But those numbers are taking a little longer to recover in some of the counties that depend heavily on tourism, like Grand County, still at about an eleven percent unemployment rate.
Still, unlike past recessions, Chamber leaders believe the recovery can be more focused and controlled. And with the right information, they’re hopeful more businesses can look at when and how to reopen more services safely, giving consumers more confidence to get out and spend.
“We’re getting lots of good data on the healthcare side. We don’t always get all of the economic data in one place, on the economic side, and this helps to give us that balance,” Miller said.
That data dashboard is up, starting today. It can be found here.