By McKenzie Romero | Editor
It’s numbers may have dipped a little, but Utah remains a popular place to work from home — depending on your job, and your ethnicity.
A new report from the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute shows the Beehive State has dipped almost 5 points to 15.7% of workers logging on at home, the ninth-highest percentage in the nation. So who is still remote post-pandemic, and who is showing up at their jobs in person?
In today’s Dispatch we look at the breakdown of the work-from-home report, an opening for a new independent medical cannabis pharmacy in Utah, and the decline in Obamacare enrollment.
“I think many people might believe that everyone has just returned to the office now — that working from home is over — that that was a pandemic thing.” — Heidi Prior, a senior public policy analyst at the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, an author of the report on Utahns working from home.
The number of Utah’s remote workers in 2024 remained more than double the pre-pandemic total, new research finds. (Stock photo by Trumzz/Getty Images)
By Annie Knox
According to the report, those who ditched their commute for the long term tended to be white or Asian workers, higher earners, and have bachelor’s degrees or higher. Their work is also concentrated in key sectors like the information industry — such as at tech and media companies — or in finance, insurance and real estate, or scientific jobs.
And one demographic group in the state experienced a big change after the height of the pandemic. Five years ago, 1 in 4 Utahns of Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander backgrounds were working from home. The rate dropped to 1 in 10 three years later — a bigger decrease than any other racial or ethnic group.
Buds of marijuana on display inside Mother Earth Wellness in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. (Photo by Christopher Shea/Rhode Island Current)
By Katie McKellar
Next week, the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food will begin accepting applications to license a new independent medical cannabis pharmacy to be located in a “medically underserved” or rural area with a population that’s smaller than Salt Lake, Utah, Davis or Weber counties.
The application is for the second of two independent medical cannabis pharmacies required to open under a bill passed by the Utah Legislature in 2025 that expanded the number of medical cannabis pharmacies allowed to operate in the state. It also aimed to create more opportunities for pharmacy operators that aren’t owned by large medical cannabis corporations.
The owner of an insurance agency that offers Obamacare plans stands outside his storefront in Miami, Fla, in 2021. In 49 states, the number of people enrolled in Obamacare plans has declined. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
STATELINE
By Shalina Chatlani
In 49 states, the number of people enrolled in Obamacare plans has declined since Congress made coverage more expensive by allowing federal subsidies to expire at the end of last year. Utah’s enrollment fell by 16%, according to a new analysis by KFF, a health policy research group.
The Trump administration announced last month that overall participation in the health insurance marketplaces created under Obamacare, officially called the Affordable Care Act, had declined by nearly 3 million people after six years of steady increases, which it attributed to “improper, phantom and fraudulent enrollment.”
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