Some pinhead wrote a book a few years back titled The End of Work. It probably didn't sell many copies in Utah.
Most Utahns, like other Americans, want to work. They are motivated not only by necessity but by the moral conviction that it's the right thing to do. Besides, too much idle time gets boring. Devil's workshop and all that.
Fortunately, the booming Utah economy is giving the people of this state the opportunity to work, to hold a job and provide for themselves and their families. And that's something to celebrate.
Economists say that Utah is about as close to full employment as is possible. The official unemployment rate is 2.5 percent, the lowest it has ever been. The last time it dipped below 3 percent was in the go-go days of July 1997, when it sank to 2.9 percent.
That's good for workers, because if you want a job, chances are you can find one. It also puts upward pressure on wages, because the tight supply of workers gives employees bargaining power.
The knock on the current economic recovery has been that corporate profits are climbing fast, but wages are not. In Utah, however, wages have been growing for about a year, according to Mark Knold, senior economist for Utah Workforce Services.
He cautions that his measure for wage growth is not precise, because it does not distinguish full-time employment from part-time. It simply divides the number of workers into the total payroll.
But with that caveat, he says that wages are growing at an annual rate of about 5.4 percent, based on preliminary numbers. That's the best since 1992, when wages grew at 5.28 percent.
Of course, every silver cloud has a dark lining. An acute long-term labor shortage could hobble economic growth. Some Utah employers are having difficulty finding qualified workers. And wage growth also puts upward pressure on prices.
But the bigger problem with the U.S. economy in recent decades has been sluggish wage growth, even in the face of productivity gains. That has caused a deterioration in the living standards of the middle class, a big reason why most women have entered the workforce whether they wanted to or not.
So we'll happily applaud full employment and growing wages. And hope they'll stick around.
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