Utah Employers, Employment and Wages by Size, 2013

The Utah Department of Workforce Services compiles quarterly employment and wage data for non-agricultural employers in Utah. Data is maintained at the establishment level (e.g., store, plant, or other type of permanent worksite facility). Since these establishments are assigned an industry and county code, their employment and wage data can be aggregated into common industry and county groupings for analysis purposes.

Employment and wage data for Utah’s non-agricultural employers are categorized in this publication by employment size for the month of March in each of the designated years. Grouping data by this criterion provides a useful tool to analyze the characteristics of Utah employers. For example, general trends of the size of Utah employers and employment concentrations by employer size class can be observed. Wage levels for large, medium, and small firms can also be evaluated.

In this publication, data is presented for both establishments and firms. The term "establishment" is generally defined as a specific physical worksite for an employer. For most employers, this is the actual street location at which business is conducted. For others, with no permanent worksite (such as salespeople, factory representatives, or distributors) it is the location from which they conduct their business (sometimes even residences).

For an overview of this publication and a look at your county, click here.

XanGo lays off 20% of workforce – fewer than 50 employees

Lehi-based XanGo, the mangosteen juice marketer that also produces and distributes a skin care line and vitamin supplements, laid off about a fifth of its workforce in response to underperforming investments.

The privately held multilevel marketing company, which at its peak had 400 employees worldwide, laid off "fewer than 50" employees, Dave Webb, the company’s vice president of communications, said Tuesday. He would not say how many employees the company had prior to the layoffs, which occurred Monday.

Workers who lost their jobs will be allowed to reapply for new positions as they become available, and they are eligible for severance packages, he said.

In a formal statement, XanGo characterized the layoffs as "part of a long-term strategy to ensure the company is nimble and best able to support its strategic goals and quickly seize developing opportunities with full vigor and commitment." Salt Lake Tribune

Salt Lake‐Utah county line a wellspring of economic vitality

In northern Utah County, hundreds of workers at IM Flash Technologies turn the silicon in common sand into speedy, power-efficient flash memory chips that store songs, photos, documents and other data in mobile phones, cameras and tablets.

Just up the road, in Salt Lake County, eBay unwrapped its new 240,000-square-foot Draper campus last month. The buildings accommodate 1,800 people who carry out customer service, software development, human resources and legal and accounting work for the e-commerce giant.

IM Flash and eBay are near Point of the Mountain, the east-west range that separates Salt Lake and Utah counties. It is here where a substantial chunk of Utah’s economic vitality is being created. Salt Lake Tribune

Food tours highlight Main Street

Park City Food Tours offers tours of the fine dining options and history of Park City's Historic Main Street. Whether popping into the Wasatch Brew Pub for a starter or checking out the latest creation at Zoom Restaurant, Shirin Spangenberg, the owner of Park City Tours, walks groups down the street, stopping in this or that business while providing a touch or perhaps an avalanche of local color. And at the heart of the business is a concept any Main Street merchant could stand behind: get more people to come back, spend money and support the local economy.

But even locals are realizing the benefits of the tour, that there is more to Main Street than meets the eye. With more than 20 years in the community, Spangenberg delivers on stories, from the Old West days of Mormon pioneers to recent events such as the Tour of Utah and the most recent celebrity sightings at the Sundance Film Festival. If locals are inviting out-of-town guests to stay, it's the kind of tour they should take and commit to heart, embodying an air of a know-it-all guide to all things Park City.

The tour even includes less obvious "food tour" merchants, incorporating galleries where owners highlight a new artist, understanding how to properly taste olive oil or a personal hand treatment at the Mountain Body Spa. In each location, a server or manager steps up to explain what the restaurant offers and what the group will try. Park Record

Managing generation diversity in Provo

Click to enlarge

Wednesday, February 6, 2013 from 9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.

To RSVP for this event, please email briansmith@utah.gov or call 801-372-2026.

Micron Embarks on Multi-use Project in Utah

There’s Silicon Valley, of course, but Utah is kicking the concept of its "Silicon Slopes" into a higher gear with a new large-scale project near the Point of the Mountain.

Earlier this week, the Lehi City Council approved Micron’s 735-acre business and housing development known as a "workplace neighborhood," where people can live, work, play and go to school all in the same place.

Plans call for the Micron project to be built over the next 25 years and bring with it thousands of jobs. It seeks to build on the 4-year-old initiative pushed by others to brand the state’s burgeoning tech industry and sell quality of life by evoking and highlighting the access to opportunities for outdoor recreation and the lifestyle that provides.

Doug Meldrum, economic development director of Lehi, said the timing is right for more growth in the teeming area. Thanksgiving Point is the population center of Utah and "seems to be the nexus of what is going on."

Micron plans to build around the exterior of the IM Flash Technologies center it operates with Intel to produce flash memory chips used to store data in music players, cameras and other digital devices. The development plan includes 780 housing units, including town homes, condominiums and single-family homes. Salt Lake Tribune

Employers Struggle to Fill Seasonal Jobs

Snow is scarce and the number of visitors in town is down from the year before, but employers are still trying to fill seasonal positions.

According the Department of Workforce Services statistics, Summit County has an unemployment rate of 4.9 percent, the lowest in the state. The Utah unemployment rate, 5.1 percent, is better than the national average, 7.9 percent.

"Local businesses are having a hard time finding locals to fill jobs," said Darrin Nielsen, the employment office supervisor for the Park City DWS offices.

Between large employers and incoming businesses, there are roughly 4,000 seasonal jobs in Summit County. The two most difficult positions to fill are housekeepers and line cooks.

DWS has felt the burden as more employers reach out for help filling positions and a waning interest in seasonal work. Through the DWS website, the number of job postings has stayed relatively the same from last year, around 3,800 seasonal jobs. But Nielsen said the office involvement with employers has grown exponentially, that employers reaching out to DWS had grown by an estimated 400 percent.

"Job vacancies have been longer this year than in the past," Nielman said. " More employers are involving DWS this year than we have ever had in the past because they need our help to find people to staff these positions."

Despite the three resorts being open, lodging numbers continue on a downward trend as fewer guests are in town, a fact that has helped resorts manage with fewer employees on staff as the ski season begins.

"We're seeing similar trends from last year," he added. "The resorts have enough employees to open, but it's still dry they have people on the books who have committed to work, but they are not all working.
"If it was two years ago, I think they would be hurting."

There have been more job fairs and more refugees being hired. DWS held more job fairs for winter seasonal jobs than ever before. There were seven job fairs in Summit and Wasatch counties, and even job fairs tailored to specific employers such as Tanger Outlets.

Another trend DWS has seen is people accepting jobs at the last minute.

"People are holding on," Nielman said. "They are reluctant to commit to a job because they were trying to find something that was better. Now, positions are getting filled." Park Record

RAMP Sports Cruising to Success on ‘Green’ Label

The phrase "bullet proof" is a term companies love to hear attached to their products. And, increasingly, a "green" label associated with a business has provided a boost in sales.
RAMP Sports has found a way to combine the two and as a result is having a hard time keeping up with requests for their handmade skis.

Mike Kilchenstein started RAMP three years ago to pursue a life-long dream after more than three decades of working with mega-ski producer Rossignol.

The first two production runs of RAMP skis and snowboards took place in Taiwan, but Kilchenstein wanted something closer to home.

RAMP secured a building near the Interstate 80 and Highway 40 junction in Summit County on April 20. By May 25, after a scramble to get all the required machinery in place, RAMP produced its first made-in-the-USA skiable prototypes.

After several testing trips to Mount Hood in Oregon, Kilchenstein, RAMP production manager Evan Howard and ski engineer Christian Alary felt they had a solid model and launched production from the Park City headquarters.


The crew at RAMP has been working non-stop since to keep up with demand.

"The only thing holding us back is our ability to produce more skis," Kilchenstein said. "They go right from our finish room to get shipped."

As a new company, Kilchenstein realized he could do things with his business model that other long-established ski enterprises could not.

He decided to focus on creating solid and good-looking skis and snowboards with an environmentally friendly production and providing a strong commitment to the consumer.

In addition to using materials and production methods to reduce the impact on the environment, RAMP does little things like shipping the equipment to buyers in travel bags rather than boxes and providing a buy back on skis when the consumer is done with them to find others uses.

RAMP also purchases 300 pounds of offsetting carbon emissions with each ski or snowboard sold.
RAMP (Riders Artists Musicians Project) is supported by a community of athletes, musicians, artists and actors who support the mantra of environmentally friendly production of skis and snowboards that get people on the mountains. Salt Lake Tribune

Six Provo Office Buildings Sold to East Bay Technology Park

The Salt Lake City office of CBRE announced that Utah developer, Warren "Pat" King, has purchased a six-building office park that was formerly a part of Novell’s corporate campus in Provo.

Financial terms of the sale transaction were not disclosed. The newly named East Bay Technology Park will be leased and managed by CBRE.

"We want to position this park to play a meaningful role in the high quality, high tech economic development of Provo, Utah County, and the state," said King.

The CBRE team of Laurie Adair, Tab Cornelison and Scott Wilmarth will oversee leasing for the new owner. Additionally, CBRE’s Asset Services will oversee property management of the park. CBRE will have both a management and leasing office on site.

Currently, the park is 40 percent leased to several technology tenants and represents a significant opportunity to capitalize on an existing development in a campus setting, company officials said.

 The park sits on 28 acres of land, and each of the six buildings are connected by enclosed corridors and sky bridges. Combined, the buildings offer nearly 500,000 square feet leasable office space. The park is situated near Interstate 15, and has access to the newly opened FrontRunner South commuter rail line via a planned Bus Rapid Transit stop.

The buildings were constructed between 1986 and 1993, and three were renovated in 2009 and 2010.
CBRE Group, headquartered in Los Angeles, is among the world’s largest commercial real estate services firms. The company has approximately 34,000 employees (excluding affiliates), and serves real estate owners, investors and tenants through more than 300 offices worldwide. Salt Lake Tribune

Lizard Skins of Orem Honored for Green Manufacturing

An Orem business is getting a green spotlight from a new recycling sustainability report prepared by the Recycling Coalition of Utah.

Lizard Skins of Orem was featured in the report for their "innovative and great green practices." The company manufactures sport biking accessories.

"We don't really like this phrase 'go green,' because that is a fixed destination," said Leli Fotu, who presented the report at the recent Recycling Coalition of Utah annual conference, which was held in Provo. "Being green is a process. It is a process of gradual trial and error and sustainable commitment. We are being green, not going green. What we hope is that people will go to this report and be inspired by these messages, and see the lessons learned, the dos and don'ts."

Brian Fruit, owner of Lizard Skins, said he never intended to be part of the green movement, but one day he got a letter from a customer "pretty much calling me an ecoterrorist." That letter prompted him to change his ways.

"We are in a green industry," he said. "We had to kind of relook at everything we are doing. We felt like we were being very green, but we weren't telling anybody."

Forgetting to take the time to tell your customers about the things you are doing to be environmentally responsible is a common business failure, he said. The company uses organic soy-based inks and sustainably sourced paper for its packaging. They installed efficient lighting and started company-wide recycling, which reduced by up to 70 percent the amount of trash they were paying to haul away. They put 39 solar panels on their building at a cost of $35,000.

"It works great but it is a slow payback," he said. Daily Herald

Smith’s Opens Fuel Center in Kimball Junction

Smith’s Food & Drug Stores has opened a fuel station in the parking lot of its supermarket located at 1725 West Uinta Way in the Village Kimball Junction, just off State Route 224 near the Olympic Park.

The station is comprised of eight filling nozzles and includes diesel fuel as an option, a courtesy air hose, a convenience-item case for snacks and a kiosk for the fuel attendant. Pumps are available 24 hours a day.

The adjacent grocery store will remain open while being remodeled. Construction is expected to be completed by spring.

"We are pleased to now offer our Park City customers fuel savings at our Smith’s Express," said Abbi Kimball, Smith’s Kimball Junction store director. "In fact, rewards points may be redeemed to save up to $2 per gallon through the remainder of the year."

Smith’s, a division of the Kroger Co., operates 131 food stores and 79 fuel stations throughout seven western states, including 47 stores and 39 fuel stations in Utah. Salt Lake Tribune

Paper Supply Firm Xpedx Closing Salt Lake, Orem Stores

The office supply, packaging and paper company xpedx is closing its Salt Lake City and Orem retail stores on Nov. 30.

All inventory is being sold at 50 percent off while supplies last.

The company’s warehouse at 1635 S. 5070 West and distribution center at 2962 S. State St. in Salt Lake City will remain in operation.

Spokeswoman Lisa H. Jester said the two retail stores, which stock seasonal and party supplies, "represent a very small part of the xpedx business. The vast majority [of what we do] is our business-to-business service," including distribution of packaging, office and printing supplies.

Seven employees will be laid off in the closures, said Jester. About 150 employees work in the firm’s other Utah operations.

News reports have said xpedx, based in Cincinnati, has already closed its facilities in Canada. In addition, the company said on its Facebook page in January that it plans to close all of its U.S. retail outlets in a move to realign the company. The entry did not indicate how many stores or employees would be impacted.

"This means we will transition away from our store business model to servicing customers from xpedx’s well-established distribution network," said the Facebook entry. "We will also open ‘mini-merchant’ locations based in some of the country’s top digital print markets. While this is the right decision for xpedx overall, it will lead to the closing of our stores division, which will unfortunately affect many talented and dedicated team members."


 Jester said that shuttering the Utah outlets are the last of the store closures and consolidations.

Shopper Cindy Strong said no other store matches the inventory at xpedx. The Salt Lake City woman was filling a shopping cart Tuesday with tiny boxes for her homemade chocolates that she’ll give out as holiday gifts and with an assortment of packaging and party goods.

"I’m stocking up, but there’ll be no place else to go when this store closes," she said. "This is a one-stop kind of store."
Jonathan Hall, who operates a wholesale gift company in Park City, said he regularly shops at xpedx and was sad "that the employees are being laid off so close to the holidays."

The company is a division of International Paper, one of the largest business-to-business distribution companies in North America.

International Paper’s roots date to the early 19th century, according to the company’s website. International Paper entered the distribution business in 1986 with the acquisition of several longtime merchant companies, and in 1998 created xpedx. Salt Lake Tribune

Summit Pushes the ‘On’ Button for Digital Media

Every day, we are surrounded by electronic images, data and sounds. When you pick up your smart phone, turn on the TV or play a video game, you are using digital media. The continued growth and expansion in Utah’s digital media industry is a vital to the state’s economic future.

As part of this growing industry, leading game designers, mobile app developers, digital animators, business executives, entrepreneurs, students, and private investors will come together at the PushButton Digital Media Summit 2012 to shape Utah’s digital footprint.

Now in its third year, the PushButton Summit will be held on November 28-29 at the Rialto Studios at Jordan Commons in Sandy, Utah.

The summit is centered on encouraging new ideas and building relationships inside and outside the industry. “PushButton brings together the creative innovators of the latest technology driving the future of the digital media industry,” said T. Craig Bott President and CEO of Grow Utah Ventures. “It’s all about discovering what is happening when creativity and technology intersect.”


This premier digital media event will focus on expanding the digital media industry in Utah and shine the spotlight on local companies, organizations and educational institutions.

Steven Roy, associate vice president of economic development at Utah Valley University and USTAR regional technology outreach director said, “The PushButton Summit is a celebration of the past, present and potential future of the digital media industry in the state of Utah.”

A 2011 report on Utah’s Digital Media industry showed digital media accounts for 1,500 jobs and $415 million in revenue for the state. Forty-one percent of these jobs are in the video gaming sector. Based on this study, a strategic plan was developed to increase the number of jobs to 3000 by the year 2016, and raise the direct revenue to Utah’s economy to $800 million.

The summit will facilitate a global forum for industry experts, innovators, and technologists. Last year’s summit had over 500 attendees and organizers are hoping for just as a large of a turnout at this year’s event.
“This year will focus more heavily on showcasing Utah’s digital media superstar companies and the educational connections with the industry,” Roy said. “We are heavily targeting students, faculty, and industry professionals.”

Digital media is part of the information technology and software cluster focus for the Governors Office of Economic Development (GOED). GOED serves as a catalyst to align necessary resources and policies that contributes to successful economic clusters and is a sponsor of Push Button Summit, along with Grow Utah Ventures and Zions Bank, USTAR, Epic Games, EDC Utah and Utah System of Higher Education. Utah Policy

Irish company buys Utah’s Panoptic Security

Utah’s Panoptic Security Inc., a provider of services to ensure merchants comply with credit card security standards, has been purchased by an Irish company.

Sysnet Global Solutions of Dublin bought Panoptic Security to help accelerate its growth in the U.S. market, the companies said.

Panoptic has about 20 employees in Salt Lake City who will stay put for now, a spokesman said.

Much like Sysnet, Panoptic provides products that help small- and medium-sized businesses, banks, underwriters and credit card processors to comply with industry standards designed to protect the security of customer account information.

"With Sysnet and Panoptic joining forces, it allows the combined group the opportunity to offer a larger global footprint and a broader product and service offering," Panoptic CEO Matt Hoffman said. Salt Lake Tribune

Provo Data Firm Pledges 1,000-plus Jobs by 2020

Qualtrics, the fast-growing data collection software firm in Provo, will get a multimillion dollar tax break from the state of Utah if it creates almost 1,100 jobs over the next seven years, the Governor’s Office of Economic Development board decided Thursday.

"This is a great company for Utah, great jobs, [a] good investment," Teri Klug, director of strategic development at the Economic Development Corporation of Utah, told the board after it unanimously approved the $10.8 million post-performance tax credit in return for a pledge to create 1,080 jobs by the end of the decade.

The jobs must pay at least 125 percent of the Utah County average wage, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics says is $724 a week. Some will pay much more.

"These jobs do pay approximately 165 percent of the average county [wage] without benefits. With health care benefits these are high-paying jobs in excess of 175 percent of the average county wage," Christopher Conabee, GOED’s managing director of corporate recruitment, said. 

Stuart Orgill, a Qualtrics co-founder, wouldn’t confirm those percentages. But the tax credit will help the company keep its headquarter in Provo, he said later.

With more than half of the Fortune 100 companies and 1,300 universities as customers, Qualtrics’ sales have been doubling each year for six years, Orgill said. Managing the growth has been difficult, and the company’s need for more senior management is outstripping its ability to develop enough leadership talent from among its 250 employees. The problem pushed Qualtrics to think about moving out of Utah, he said. 

Founded in 2002, the company sells online question-and-answer survey tools. Among its 4,800 customers are online travel sites Expedia and Travelocity, automakers GM and Toyota, tech companies Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft, and telecommunications giant Verizon.

In April, Qualtrics raked in $70 million in equity capital from Accel Partners and Sequoia Capital, after turning down a larger offer from another investment firm.

Orgill said Qualtrics didn’t accept the $70 million to finance its growth; the company can do that with cash it generates through sales. Instead, the company took the investment because it comes with Accel and Sequoia’s high-level management skills, which Qualtrics needs to expand globally, he said.

The investment was the largest first-round speculation in a Utah software startup since 2008, according to GOED.

Also Thursday, GOED’s board approved two other tax incentives:

• The Royal Bank of Scotland will receive a post-performance tax credit of $5.3 million, in return for creating 50 more jobs at its support center in Taylorsville. The incentive expands an existing pact the bank forged with GOED two years ago, when the state development agency agreed to provide an $8.6 million tax credit to one of the bank’s divisions, on the condition that it creates 260 jobs by 2025. 
• Workday Inc., a California-based business software company, will receive an $8.4 million post-performance tax credit. The company has pledged to create 500 jobs in Salt Lake City over 15 years. The agreement modifies an incentive GOED gave the company in March. At the time, Workday planned to create 250 jobs. Salt Lake Tribune

Costco Opens Store in Spanish Fork

People from across southern Utah County gathered in the dark, cold and snow to be part of the ribbon cutting for Spanish Fork's newest business and to have the chance to be some of the first customers inside the newest Costco store.

Costco Wholesale Corporation is the fifth-largest retailer in the United States and the largest membership warehouse club chain. Costco focuses on selling high-volume products for a low price. Most goods are bulk-packaged and marketed to large families and businesses. Costco doesn't carry multiple brands or varieties, which allows for a high volume of sales from a single vendor and further price reductions and low marketing costs.

To bring Costco to town, Spanish Fork offered the wholesale giant incentives totaling millions of dollars. Incentives include paying the store's utilities for four years, giving the store sales tax rebates for the first 18 months, waiving all city-related building, impact and connection fees and reimbursing the company $225,000 for the grading and fill work done by the city and paid by Costco. Costco's end of the agreement including building, opening and operating a store in Spanish Fork. Costco opened its doors after little less than a year of work to prepare the area.

Spanish Fork city believes that the incentives given to Costco will pay off. The city conducted a study that determined that incentive costs will be recovered in sales tax within three years from when Costco opens its doors. Daily Herald

Private Equity Firm to Buy Utah’s Ancestry.com for $1.6B

In a cash deal valued at $1.6 billion, Ancestry.com has agreed to sell a controlling stake in the Provo-based genealogy website to a group led by European private equity firm Permira Funds.

CEO Tim Sullivan would not say exactly how long the deal had been in the works or how much of Ancestry Permira will acquire when the deal closes early next year. Those kinds of details will come out later, he said.

Sullivan said Ancestry anticipates no changes in its operating structure with the deal. The company will stay in Provo, where the company has about 700 employees, and it will continue to focus on beefing up content and technology, as well as expanding product offerings in areas such as DNA that improve the experience of more than 2 million subscribers. Longer term, Permira’s presence in Ancestry will make it possible to accelerate some investments in the company that Ancestry hopes to make, Sullivan said. Salt Lake Tribune

Women’s Mental Health Center Opens New Utah Location

The Healing Group (THG), a private practice women’s mental health center in Utah, announced the
expansion of its therapeutic services to women and their families in two ways: It’s opening a new 2,300-
square-foot facility in Salt Lake City at 6771 S. 900 East Ste 100; and it has partnered with Regroup
Therapy to bring women together with expert, licensed therapists in a live video support group, allowing
women to join from wherever they choose.

“In three and half years, we’ve grown from one therapist who was renting space from us to nine fulltime
therapists at two locations serving Salt Lake City and Utah Counties,” said Kristin B. Hodson, MSW and
LCSW, founder and executive director of The Healing Group. “Through our partnership with Regroup
Therapy, we’re now able to reach women in remote areas and those unable to get childcare or come into
the center.” Utah Business

Continued Drought Could End Farming Tradition

Lee Ray Sorensen once told his sons Mark and Neil that the groundwater ditch that ran alongside their hay and cattle farm would always have enough water to feed their fields. The brothers can now stick half of the length of their arms into cracks between the dried mud where that water used to be. With all of Utah’s 29 counties now declared drought disaster areas, the Sorensen brothers near Spring City in northern Sanpete County are not the only farmers who have seen this season’s hopes dry up and become dusty before their eyes.

Since October 2011, only 17.2 inches of rain has fallen on northern Sanpete County, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That is just over half of the previous water year's 32.5 inches.

While many farmers throughout the state, including Utah County farmers, have been able to fall back on water storage and reservoirs, the farmers in the Sanpete Valley have little to no water storage to draw from for their crops and livestock. The natural springs and runoff from the mountains that usually supply the region fell short this year after last winter's lessened contribution in spring snow melt. Daily Herald

Utah company gives power to third world cities while empowering individuals

On Monday, a Utah company was considered by 'Outside Magazine' to be one of the best places to work in America. It's a Company that has roots in Africa.

Robert Workman traveled halfway around the world to help others, and during his travels he found a multi-million dollar idea.

Workman started his business career at Provo Craft. He turned his father's business from a small retail store into an international distributor.

He got the idea when he was traveling in Africa. That is when Workman started 'Goal Zero,' a company that produces power sources charged by the sun. The company engineered solar panels and provided electricity to light up an entire village of 50 homes in Africa.

Goal Zero's message of empowering individuals earned the company the spot on Outside Magazine's annual ranking of the Best Places to Work list.

In the past three years, sales have grown exponentially for Goal Zero, and in a year the company will have outgrown their brand new facilities. KSL