The recession of 2001-2002 hit Utah's high-tech workers hard. Many were laid off from good-paying jobs with good benefits. What happened to them?

This is the subject of a special research project recently completed by the Department of Workforce Services (DWS), now available on jobs.utah.gov .

Mark Knold, DWS senior economist, and several other staff, have studied subsequent payroll records in Utah to see what the re-employment of these workers looked like—whether they were quickly re-employed, whether they were re-employed in another high-tech area, whether they were able to find jobs that paid as much as they were making before, etc. Some of the results are quite surprising.

The study determined that over 10,000 high-technology jobs in Utah disappeared during the recession, primarily in Salt Lake County. Those 10,000 high-tech jobs accounted for 26 percent of all Utah jobs lost, and for 41 percent of lost wages. As of December 2003, those jobs had not re-emerged. Where did those laid-off workers end up?

Some of those workers never reemerged on Utah payrolls. But most —71 percent— did become re-employed in Utah. Of these, nearly half found jobs within three months of their layoff. This in itself is pleasantly surprising, since they did so during a prolonged economic downturn.

Only 26 percent found re-employment within the high-technology arena. Yet, an astonishing 50 percent ended up making more than they had before their layoff! This is unexpected since high-tech jobs are generally high-paying, and presumably hard to replace outside of that sector. But just over half of the re-employed workers proved that isn't necessarily the case.

To see the full article, or just to read a summary, go to http://jobs.utah.gov/wi/pubs/publicat.asp , select the article from the drop-down list, and click on GO.

For questions about this study, contact Mark Knold at 801 526-9458 or mknold@utah.gov .

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