The 2000 census shows Utah has become a much different place in the last ten years.
News Specialist Coco Warner has an explanation.
The majority of news to come out of the census was positive for Utah.
Utahns are better educated than they were ten years ago. We're also wealthier, and fewer of us live below the poverty line.
But some of the biggest news is how the face of Utah is changing.
First the good news-- overall the 1990's proved to be a very good decade for Utah.
Jay Waite/U.S. Census Bureau: "MY VIEW-- I'VE SEEN ALL THE STATES AND UTAH IS AMONG THE BEST AS FAR AS THIS PICTURE, AS FAR AS THE GROWTH."
According to the U.S. Census, Utah incomes are on the rise.
The median household income increased 55 percent to close in on $46,000.
Fewer Utahns are in poverty, as Utah continues to fare better than the national average for people in poverty.
More Utahns are graduating from high school and attaining a bachelor's degree or higher.
And Utah is becoming more diverse. The foreign born population increased 171 percent. And while it's still below the national average, per capita it was one of the largest increases in the nation.
Advocates for minority groups say the census numbers are a wake up call.
Joanne Milner/Horizonte Center: "THE PROBLEM IS THAT WE HAVE HAD PEOPLE WHO ARE LIVING HERE WHO ARE FROM OTHER COUNTRIES AND THEY HAVE NOT FELT THAT RECEPTIVITY. IT'S TIME THAT THIS COMMUNITY BE AWAKENED AND WE HAVE BEEN REMISS IN INTEGRATING AND INCLUDING AND INVOLVING THESE NEW RESIDENTS OF OUR STATE."
Salt Lake's Horizonte Center is a non-traditional school and has students who range from age 12 to 85, with more than 64 countries and 82 languages represented.
Rene Delgado represents the largest single minority group -- those from Latin American countries, or of Latin American descent.
An engineer in Mexico for 15-years, he came to Utah looking for ecomomic opportunity.
Rene Delgado/Utah immigrant: "THE SITUTAION IS DIFFICULT BECAUSE WE ARE PEOPLE IN NEED OF HELP AND NEED DIFFERENT OPPORTUNITIES IN THIS COUNTRY."
Now there were several more facts to come out of the Census. For example, the best educated group of Utahns seems to congregate in the Mount Olympus area, and the tiny town of Halls Crossing near Lake Powell wins the car-pool award.
Fifty-percent of people there share rides. The state's average is 14 percent.
From The Associated Press
Dr. Terry Clark moved his family from Alaska to Utah in 1998 for postgraduate studies at the University of Utah, and he decided to stay. He launched a business that uses the Internet to train doctors and nurses how to treat victims of chemical or biological attack.
"It's a great place to live," said Clark, 44, a former Army surgeon and Gulf War veteran who enjoys skiing and hiking. "I hope to stay here. I'd like to see Utah's technology industry keep growing."
Clark is a specific example a broad trend in Utah during the past decade: Fueled by the technology sector, Utah's work force grew by 42 percent during the 1990s, twice the national average, according to 2000 census figures released Tuesday.
The figures came from the 53-question "long form" filled out by one of every six households nationwide.
By 2000, Utah had more than 1.1 million people 16 and older in the work force. In 1990 that figure was 784,501.
The jobs pay more, too. Median household income in Utah increased to $45,726, up from an inflation-adjusted $39,469 in 1990.
Utah house values skyrocketed to a median of $146,100 in 2000, from $68,900 a decade earlier.
State officials say Utah has never witnessed such phenomenal growth in wealth.
The state was the fourth fastest-growing state during the decade, with a population that grew by nearly 30 percent to more than 2.2 million people. Utah's own birthrate fueled much of the increase, though an influx of Hispanics and others moving to Utah were part of it.
Intel Corp. executive Dale Welcome, 43, moved here from Portland, Ore., with a wife and three children after his company consolidated administrative operations in a Salt Lake City suburb.
Welcome lives in a neighborhood of "transplanted executives" that he says helped cushion his arrival in a Mormon-dominated, conservative state. It couldn't be more different from the ethnic and racial diversity of the Northwest, he said.
Welcome has mixed feelings about Utah. He says the outdoor life is "fabulous" but the public schools have disappointed him. Utah ranks at the bottom of states in per-pupil spending, though test scores are good.
He sent one son to a Catholic school last year and supplemented another son's education with tutoring. Now he's turning attention to his 8-year-old daughter's education.
Welcome is a controller who handles the payroll for Intel's 55,000 U.S. employees. The computer chip manufacturer has plans for a research and development center that could bring thousands more high-wage jobs to Riverton. The plans are on hold because of a slump in the semiconductor industry.
Utah's relatively low cost of living and pro-family atmosphere has drawn immigrants, but the bottom line is jobs.
"People have migrated to Utah because there's a lot of work here," said Bob Gallegos of the Utah branch of the Hispanic group La Raza.
The state's Hispanic population more than doubled in the past decade to 201,559. They now make up Utah's largest minority group at 9 percent.
"We've attracted a lot of corporations into Utah, and therefore we have a lot of Hispanics that are taking jobs that a lot of other people wouldn't take. They take the jobs in the $5-to $10-an-hour market," Gallegos said.
(Copyright 2002 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
