Specialty contractors in the Mountain States face another good-news, bad-news scenario next year: plenty of work available in most markets and an ongoing struggle to find enough qualified people to do it.
Utah’s overall unemployment rate, reported as 3.2% at the end of the third quarter of 2016 by the state’s Dept. of Workforce Services, is among the lowest in the country. Colorado’s unemployment also sits at 3.2%, and Idaho’s is 3.8%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Current U.S. unemployment is 4.9%.