Why Utah ranks as one of the best states to work from home
SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — Low electricity costs, big houses, and widespread broadband access. Those are all reasons why Utah was recently ranked one of the best states to live for remote workers.
Earlier this month, WalletHub put Utah in the No. 2 spot on its “Best States for Working from Home” list. The top slot went to New Jersey, while neighboring Colorado was pegged at 10th.
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One of the key reasons Utah scored so highly was because it’s cheap to work from home in the Beehive State. The analysis said Utah has the second-lowest electricity costs in the nation, “which plays a big part in minimizing the cost of staying home all day.”
WalletHub added that internet prices in Utah are reasonable, noting the state is rated among the top 10 in the country for broadband access.
Additionally, the roughly 14% of Utahns who work from home aren’t likely to feel cooped up. According to WalletHub, this is because Utah has the largest homes in the nation, averaging about 2,800 square feet.
The window views of snow-capped mountains and the proximity to world-class outdoor recreation probably don’t hurt either.
Who is working from home?
Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau and other sources, CoworkingMag recently profiled remote workers in the American West. The magazine highlighted cities along the Wasatch Front, including Salt Lake City, Ogden and Provo.
In these cities, remote workers made up roughly 20% of the workforce. According to the magazine’s analysis, the typical remote worker on the Wasatch Front is a millennial with a bachelor’s degree or higher.
These Utahns tend to work in professional and business services, finance, education, and healthcare. In the Salt Lake City area, the median income for remote workers was about $65,000 a year.
Returning to Utah
Glen Kreiner, the L.S. Skaggs Presidential Chair in Business Ethics Management at the University of Utah, said that Utahns who move away for work reasons tend to come back to the Beehive State if given the chance to work from home.
“If they could live wherever they wanted, they would live here,” he said.
Kreiner touched on the fact that Utah has the largest average family size in the nation, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Because of this large network of relationships, it acts as a “gravitational pull” to bring people back to Utah.
This happened with Kreiner himself. He moved back to Utah five years ago, before the COVID-19 pandemic, for family reasons, although he still worked for his former employer, Penn State. Not long after, he got hired by the University of Utah.
“I have neighbors who did that, too,” he said. “They moved to Utah post-pandemic even though their corporate headquarters are in other places of the country.”
Still wrestling with remote work
About a year-and-a-half ago, Kreiner said that he was part of a CEO roundtable with various Utah employers, such as Overstock.com. He said that all of the companies were wrestling with remote work in different ways.
“Some of the companies were like, we want workers back in the building all day, every day, because that’s our culture. They didn’t want to lose any of that high-touch experience” he said. “Others said no, you can move away and be remote as much as you want.”
From Kreiner’s view, Utah companies are still tinkering with their remote work policies. However, he noted that many have landed on the hybrid model, allowing employees the flexibility to work from home a few days a week.
Still, each industry is its own marketplace. Those where employers are more desperate for top talent are the ones more likely to allow them to work remotely, Kreiner said. Other employers in less competitive labor markets are, on the other hand, better positioned to require workers to be in the office.
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