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Hello, and happy August!

In many ways, Jackson Hole is special but not unique.

This reality was driven home to me anew recently, as I compressed two years of untaken vacation into about eight weeks. My trips took me as far south as Flagstaff, Arizona, and as far north as Denali National Park.

Whether as big as San Francisco or as small as Talkeetna, Alaska, every place I visited was experiencing labor shortages, resulting in stores and restaurants shortening their hours and/or closing some days.

Most places I visited were also experiencing record levels of visitation. Certainly this is Jackson Hole’s reality, and the resulting pressures are the focus of the essay below.

• PS: I Need Your Help, Please
• Who is Benefiting from Our Current Boom?
• What’s Good For GM…
• Thank You for Your Support

Two other thoughts frame this newsletter.

First, what’s going on in Jackson Hole (and Moab and Flagstaff and Lake Tahoe and Idaho’s panhandle and…) isn’t new, but instead an acceleration of phenomena occurring before COVID-19 struck.

Rather than fundamentally change things, COVID instead illuminated a number of previously overlooked problems, challenges, and trends now engulfing – if not overwhelming – every desirable place to live. And as is true for all these other places, Jackson Hole doesn’t have the first clue what to do about it.

Second, like all the places I visited, Jackson Hole not only has far fewer workers than jobs, it doesn’t have enough housing for those workers. For example, between March 1 and July 31, the Jackson Hole News&Guide ran a total of 20,581 column inches of Help Wanted ads versus 163 column inches of Rental Housing ads, a ratio of 126:1. Given that there are 112 column inches per page, this means that, over the past five months, the average paper has had one-and-one-eighth pages of Help Wanted ads for every one inch of Rental Housing ads.

All of which raises three questions for me.

First, is Jackson Hole’s problem one of scarcity or abundance?

By this I mean: Do we have too few workers and too little housing, or too many jobs and too much economic activity? Conventional wisdom suggests the former, but arguably the “we’re too busy” explanation is just the other side of the same coin.

Second, is tourism’s business model still workable?

As an industry, tourism’s basic model is to hire a ton of people at relatively low wages. That this model is struggling – not just in Jackson Hole but in literally every other place I visited in the last eight weeks – suggests a systemic problem, one being exposed by this summer’s travel-related pressures.

Thinking bigger still, is there perhaps a fundamental problem with our larger economic system? The large-and-growing issues surrounding America’s large-and-growing income and wealth inequality suggest there might be.

Finally, in Jackson Hole, is the tail of commerce wagging the dog of community?

As the essay below suggests, Jackson Hole is experiencing record-setting everything: visitation, taxable sales, traffic, and so much more. Yet save for tourists, few people seem happy. Not employees. Not business owners. Not seasonal residents nor locals.

Which begs the question: We may be booming, but to what end? Are we a better, happier place because we’re raking in money? And not just from tourists, but from our exploding investment, real estate, and remote-working economies?

When even business owners tell me we’re too busy, one has to wonder.

This newsletter is not the tool for answering these questions. But at a minimum, if you’ve been feeling overwhelmed by this summer – heck, by the last couple of years – perhaps you can find some solace in knowing you aren’t alone in feeling that way.

As always, thanks for reading, thanks for your on-going support, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Cheers!

Jonathan Schechter
Executive Director

PS: I Need Your Help, Please

In all the work I do, my goal is to offer new insights into important issues, and do so in an easy-to-understand fashion.

With luck, I succeed more often than not. But what never fails to surprise me is how much time and effort it takes to do the work. For example, it took me a week to produce this newsletter – to find the data, make sense of them, create the graphics, figure out what in the world I wanted to say, and then say it in what I hope is a coherent and accessible fashion.

The same is true for the other work I take on. To offer another example, the half-day 22 in 21: Tourism conference I staged in May took several weeks to pull together, and that was after several months of preliminary work.

I anticipate far more of the same during the upcoming months, when I plan to stage two or three more 22 in 21 conferences, as well as return to a regular newsletter schedule (I suspended them during my summer travels).

I mention all this because this work takes time, time is money, and I simply cannot do the work without financial support.

As is the case for so many Jackson Hole non-profits, my Charture Institute relies on donations given through Old Bill’s Fun Run, for the matching funds Old Bill’s provides are extraordinarily valuable to small organizations like Charture.

Will you please support CoThrive, 22 in 21, and Charture’s many other efforts by making a donation through Old Bill’s Fun Run? Click here to go to the Charture-specific donation page.

Thank you so very much.

Who is Benefiting from Our Current Boom?

Stars live for millions of years, but even they are not infinitely sustainable.

Most stars are fueled by hydrogen, which nuclear fusion converts to helium. Eventually, as their hydrogen supply diminishes, stars start burning that helium, which in turn triggers a seemingly paradoxical phenomenon: the star’s interior begins to contract into its core while, simultaneously, its exterior grows larger and shines brighter.

This marks the “red giant” phase of a star’s life, one which eventually comes to a quick and spectacular end when the star collapses in on itself after burning through the hydrogen, helium, and other resources sustaining its existence.

I mention this because red giants came to mind when I received Teton County’s most recent economic indicators. Specifically, in June 2021:

• Teton County’s merchants sold an all-time record amount of taxable goods;
• Teton County’s roads carried an all-time record number of vehicles for June (June 2021’s record traffic counts were quickly eclipsed by July 2021’s);
• Both Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks set June visitation records (July 2021’s figures will almost certainly be higher); and
• The Jackson Hole Airport set June records for both commercial airline passengers and private plane activity (ditto).

Graphs 1a and 1b shows just how crazy June 2021 was – not only was every previous June record smashed, but most of June’s numbers set or came close to setting all-time highs, regardless of month. Yet July and August are supposed to be our busy months…

At least this year, June became the new July, leaving July to explore uncharted seas.

Graph 1a

Graph 1b

June’s sales tax numbers are worthy of a little extra attention because, as Graph 2 shows, June 2021’s taxable sales were 6.8% higher than those in September, 2019, the previous record-holding month. And as Graph 3 shows, June’s sales were so strong that they powered our economy well beyond where we were when COVID hit.

Graph 2

Graph 3

While our sales tax boom was clearly correlated with our recent tourism boom (Graph 4), if we want to understand Jackson Hole’s taxable economy it’s actually more instructive to look at what happened during the COVID downturn.

Graph 4

Using the classifications provided by the state, Teton County’s taxable sales can be broken down into seven basic categories. In descending dollar order, these are:

• Core Retail (i.e., storefront retail)
• Lodging
• All Other
• Restaurants
• Construction
• Car Sales
• On-line Shopping. (Graph 5)

Graph 5

What’s notable about this graph is that the top four categories – Core Retail, Lodging, All Other, and Restaurants – were all clearly affected by COVID. And to state the obvious, Core Retail, Lodging, and Restaurants form the foundation of our tourism economy.

Yet the remaining three categories didn’t decline during COVID. This suggests that to fully understand what and who are driving our taxable economy, we need to look at the data through another lens. Graph 6 tries to do this.

Graph 6

As Graph 6 suggests, while tourism is driving the recent jump in sales, the thing that really mattered during COVID (and even before) were the purchases made by locals, specifically on-line purchases and those made by folks building, remodeling, and/or furnishing homes in Jackson Hole. And when combined with Graph 7, it becomes pretty clear that while COVID affected the most visible part of our taxable economy – Tourism – the other half of our economy weathered COVID just fine, thank you.

Graph 7

Then consider two other points.

First, taxable sales account for only about one-sixth of Jackson Hole’s economy: investment income is a much bigger slice of our economic pie than taxable sales; real estate sales are about equal to taxable sales; and we have a large and growing “Zoom” economy.

Second, this other five-sixths of our economy exploded last year.

Add it all together, and it becomes easier to see why, for all its awfulness, COVID left the local economy relatively unscathed.

What’s Good For GM…

To return to the red giant metaphor, not only has the local economy recovered from its COVID-induced coma, but by all appearences is now growing at an explosive rate. The question is, at what cost?

In 1953, Charles Wilson, the then-president of General Motors, famously (although apocryphally) told Congress that “What’s good for GM is good for the country.”

By equating economic health with overall national health, Mr. Wilson encapsulated capitalism’s philosophical ideal of a successful society: Society thrives when every individual and organization maximizes their own economic self-interest.

Throughout its history, Jackson Hole has been home to folks who embrace this view. However, it’s also been home to many people who don’t, feeling instead the community should focus on the collective good, both human and environmental.

Tension has always existed between the two camps, but to date our geographic isolation and the relatively low demands on our natural and human resources have allowed for an uneasy truce. As money and people continue to pour into the region, though, that balance is failing. As a result, I think the next several years will be ones defined by increasingly pitched battles between economic self-maximizers and those who feel otherwise.

In fact, this battle is already heating up, as evidenced by the depth and breadth of concerns dominating locals’ conversations. Traffic. Housing. Real estate. Construction. Income inequality. Tourism. Crowds. Not only does the list goes on, but considering each item independently misses the unfortunate synergy between them.

A synergy so extreme that, as I noted earlier, even business owners are telling me that Jackson Hole is too busy this summer.

Which in turn raises the meta-question: Our economy may be booming, but who is benefiting from that boom? Surely some folks, but I’m not sure whom.

What I am sure of, though, is that our community is home to a large and growing contingent of anxious and worried and burned-out folks. Workers and shopkeepers and residents who share not just a passion for this place, but a sense that there is more to life – especially life in the Tetons – than simply working or, more broadly, catering to economic exigencies.

Something has to give, and I’m not sure what it will be. I fear, though, that the process will not be pretty.

Closing where I began, the great concern for us as a community is whether in its quest to grow – an effort abetted by entities ranging from international airlines and tourism companies to local websites and lifestyle magazines – Jackson Hole’s tourism economy has become like a red giant, an entity shining brightly because it is in the process of using up the community’s essential resources in a gloriously unsustainable fashion.

Our environment. Our people. Our sense of community. All of these essential resources and more are threatened by the seemingly insatiable needs of not just our tourism economy, but the related “Zoom town” economy which, in a bitterly ironic way, is sucking up many of the resources tourism needs to succeed.

A question I’ve heard repeatedly this summer is “Have we passed the point of no return?” Another is a variation on that theme: “Are we a community or just an economy? More than just an economy? Different than just an economy? Better than just an economy?”

Put more simply, are we as special as we think we are? Or are we notable only because tourists flock here, and because Wyoming’s tax laws have allowed us to become the richest county in the richest country in the history of the world?

By myself, I can’t answer these questions, nor address the issues they raise. I firmly believe, however, that collectively we can. As we consider our future, I know of no more important task.

Thank You for Your Support

Please support CoThrive, 22 in 21, and Charture’s many other efforts by making a donation through Old Bill’s Fun Run? Click here to go to the Charture-specific donation page.

Hello, and happy May!

Isn’t spring grand!

Over the last several weeks, the natural world has been blooming in front of my eyes. For example, two mornings ago I awoke to be greeted by the leaf in the picture below – it hadn’t been there when the sun went down the night before.

Spring is also bringing a bumper crop of issues into my life. Some are town council-related; others are simply the warp and woof of my professional and personal life.

Add it all together and you get this newsletter, a mash-up of some new ideas, some new data, and some fresh takes on subjects I’ve written about in past newsletters.

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As I noted in my most recent newsletter, this coming Wednesday, May 12, from 8:00 am to noon, I am hosting the latest in my on-going series of “22 in 21” conferences. The focus of the event will be tourism, with the theme: “Undertourism. Overtourism. Ideal Tourism. What Is It, and How Do We Know?”

There is no charge, but donations are encouraged.

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Three items:

• Reflections On a Cup of Coffee;
• The Coming Employment Shortage; and
• What Hath the Pandemic Wrought?

As always, thank you for your interest, feedback, and support.

Stay healthy, and all the best!

Jonathan Schechter
Executive Director

(Relatively) Quick Hits

Reflections On a Cup of Coffee

A few days ago, I was interviewed by the US correspondent for Verdens Gang, Norway’s biggest newspaper. He was in town researching a story about America’s wealthiest county, and asked me to explain Jackson Hole’s dynamics.

We met at a coffee shop, and at one point he asked what local government was doing to help address the fact that, along with having America’s highest per-capita income, Teton County also has America’s greatest income inequality. I explained that our options were rather limited on that score, because while Jackson Hole’s economy is firmly planted in the 21st century, Wyoming’s mechanisms for funding state and local government haven’t changed much since they were developed in the late 1960s.

For example, of the $3.80 billion Teton County residents reported in Adjusted Gross Income in 2018 (the most recent year available), exactly none of it was taxed. To put that $3.8 billion in perspective, sales taxes are the biggest single source of income for local government, and in 2018 Teton County’s merchants sold a total of $1.54 billion in taxable goods – just 40% of residents’ combined incomes.

The more powerful example was this.

I asked the reporter how much he paid for his cup of coffee. He replied: “$2.00.” In response, I observed that the 12 cents in sales tax he paid for that coffee put infinitely more into local government coffers than the $0.00 in taxes paid on Teton County’s $1.8 billion in 2020 real estate sales.

He had a hard time fathoming that. I do too.

I also have a hard time fathoming how any local real estate agent can claim, with anything approaching a straight face, that implementing a real estate transfer tax might slow down or otherwise harm the local real estate market.

The current market is hallmarked by offers – sometimes higher than the asking price – being made on homes the potential buyer has never seen. When money is being splashed around in that fashion, it’s simply not credible to claim that the extra cost of a real estate transfer tax will make any difference to anyone.

Put another way, those arguing against a real estate transfer tax are making an ideological argument, not one based on economics or an actual understanding of Jackson Hole’s real estate market.

The Coming Employment Shortage

Each page in the Jackson Hole News&Guide is 16 inches high. In the classified ads section, there are 7 columns of ads. Multiply those 7″ by 16″ of height, and each full page has 112 column inches of ads.

As I write this, the most recent edition of the News&Guide was its May 5, 2021. Going back to 2018, the table below shows the column inches of Help Wanted and Rental Housing ads in each year’s first issue of May, as well as the cumulative column inches for the 52 weeks ending with that issue.

The thing to note, of course, is how little Rental Housing is being advertised. The May 5, 2021 issue had 72% fewer inches of Rental Housing ads than its counterpart the year before. Looking at the longer-term trend, the most recent 52 week running total is 61% down.

As Graph 1 shows, Rental Housing ads started to decline in July, 2020, about the time that Jackson Hole’s real estate market kicked into overdrive last year (in the first half of 2020, local real estate sales totaled around $600 million; during the second half, the figure was twice that: $1.2 billion).

While it’s not proof-positive, the timing of the decline lends weight to the argument that the surge in real estate sales is displacing a growing number of folks from their long-time rentals.

Graph 1

What’s also striking is that the ads suggest employers are getting increasingly anxious about their summer 2021 staffing situations.

Seasonal employment – particularly in summer – is the foundation of Jackson Hole’s tourism economy. (Looking to the future, it’s not clear to me whether local employers will be able to continue relying on seasonal employees. That, however, is an issue to explore in a future newsletter.) As Graph 2 suggests, this year more employers have started advertising earlier in the season, with every newspaper since mid-February having more Help Wanted ads than its counterpart in 2019.

Even more striking is this. Over the most recent 13 weeks, the total column inches of Help Wanted ads is 26% higher than the same period in 2019. Not the pandemic-influenced 2020, but the strong-economy 2019. Also comparing 2021 to 2019, the total column inches of Rental Housing ads is down 79%.

While there are no definitive estimates of how many people might visit Jackson Hole this summer, the few extant data suggest we will not only see more people, but that they will start arriving sooner in the spring and staying longer into the fall. If that’s the case, our systems will be taxed – perhaps at record levels – in at least three different ways:

• Our roads, hotel capacity, and other components of physical infrastructure will likely be pushed to their limits;
• Our businesses and, by extension, community at large will be pushed to their limits by too-few employees being available to handle likely-record numbers of tourists; and, of course,
• As was the case in the summer of 2020, our ecosystem will be stressed by large numbers of people looking to recreate, camp (short- and long-term), and otherwise escape a year’s worth of COVID-related confinement.

How we will deal with these challenges is not at all clear.

Graph 2

What Hath the Pandemic Wrought?

As I see it, the COVID-19 pandemic didn’t fundamentally alter anything happening in Jackson Hole. What it did do, though was pour gasoline on already-burning fires of growth and change. Today, those growth-and-change fires are major conflagrations, ones threatening to fundamentally change not just Jackson Hole’s economy and character, but those of the entire Tetons region.

The aforementioned real estate sales are one obvious indicator. What’s interesting to me, though, is that when real estate agencies report on the market, they focus only on the revenue side of the transactions, not the costs.

By this I mean that local real estate newsletters clearly reflect the agents’ glee over record numbers of sales for record-high prices. What they don’t discuss, however, is how those sales seem to be reducing the number of long-term, lower-cost long-term rentals, and what the implications of those changes might be for the local economy and our community character.

The real estate newsletters also avoid discussing how Jackson Hole’s boom is affecting the surrounding region.

In particular, the huge run-up in Jackson Hole’s real estate prices is spilling over into Wyoming’s Star Valley and Idaho’s Teton Valley. Both have been in the process of evolving from bedroom communities for Jackson Hole to places with their own free-standing economies, and here too the pandemic has hastened that process.

This subject is worthy of a much longer essay. For now, however, I’ll offer two other indicators of the changes sweeping over Jackson Hole.

Private planes

The Jackson Hole Airport is the only commercial airport in a national park, and one thing that has clearly changed with the pandemic is the mix of planes using the airport.

As it happens, I live about 10 miles south of the airport, right under the flight path of the most common approach for arriving planes. As a result, my gut sense has been that plane traffic has sharply increased in the past year or so.

A feeling which, it turns out, the data confirm. Daily plane traffic counts are available for the past few years, and as Graph 3 shows, between April 2018 and April 2020, the average number of flights per day increased about 13% (private plane traffic by about 5%, and commercial around 25%).

In the past year, however, while the 365 day rolling average number of commercial flights fell about 8%, the number of private jets and propeller flights has increased by nearly 1/3 (jets comprise the vast majority of these flights). Figuring the airport is open 15 hours/day, this means that, in the past year, on the typical day a private plane was flying into the Jackson Hole Airport every 15 minutes. At its peak the frequency was over twice that.

Looking ahead, there’s no reason to think the trend in private planes will change – it may flatten out; it more likely will grow. What will change, however, is the amount of commercial air traffic.

Until the more profitable business travel market rebounds, airlines are focusing on vacation-oriented destinations, and this summer Jackson Hole will be served by seven airlines, an all-time record. Similarly, there will be direct flights from 18 different cities, with at least 21 flights/day (peaking at 31 on Saturdays). All that, too, will be all-time records.

Providing yet another test of the community’s systems for handling crowds.

Graph 3

Taxable Sales

In the March edition of CoThrive, I suggested the pandemic’s effects on the local economy may be behind us. At least as far as our taxable sales economy, the most recent sales tax data confirm this.

For Jackson Hole, the pandemic formally struck on March 15, 2020, when COVID-19 caused the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort to shut down three weeks early. As a result, what had been on track to be a strong sales month ended up 23% below March 2019’s figure. As a further result, the March 2020 baseline was so low that the just-released March 2021 sales tax figures were a staggering 60% higher than the March 2020 figure.

Which, in turn, pulled the 12 month running total of taxable sales back up to essentially where it was before the pandemic hit.

How did this happen? Again, not because of a fundamental change in the local economy, but because the pandemic accelerated trends that were already occurring.

While Tourism-related sales are at early 2018 levels, over the past year people building, remodeling, and equipping new homes have spent so much money that the Build & Equip category of sales is more-than-offsetting the declines in Tourism-related sales. Throw in the prodigious amount of commercial construction occurring throughout the county, and Build & Equip is now the driver of Teton County’s taxable sales economy. (Graph 4)

Graph 4

As it actually has been for a while. As Graph 5 suggests, the Build & Equip economy has been growing faster than Tourism for several years. COVID-19 accelerated that difference, both because of a sharp increase in Build & Equip sales and a sharp decline in Tourism sales.

Graph 5

Concluding Thoughts

People who spend a collective $1.8 billion on local real estate are likely to want to spend even more to build on the lot they purchased, or remodel the older home they acquired, or at a minimum make purchases that will turn their new home into something that reflects their personality and interests. Combine that with rising prices for building materials and anecdotal evidence that everyone in the local building trades is super-busy for the foreseeable future, and it seems certain that the Build & Equip sector of the local economy will remain strong.

Then there’s tourism. If reality turns out to be anything close to the speculation about the coming tourism tsunami, this summer will also see a huge spike in Tourism-related taxable sales.

This line of thought raises so many interesting questions that no single newsletter could do them justice. That noted, I’ll offer one.

Assuming we set all sorts of records for sales tax revenues, what will be the cost? To the people doing the work? To the human and physical infrastructure? To ecosystem health?

Because we measure real estate sales, that industry can giddily report record sales figures. Similarly, because we measure taxable sales, we have a good sense of those figures, which in turn gives us a good sense of local government revenues.

But to state the obvious, there are costs associated with those revenues. And the simple reality is that we have no good tools – heck, we don’t even have any bad tools – for assessing the costs to the community of our taxable sales successes.

That’s not an issue we can address at the moment, but with luck events like my 22 in 21: Tourism will allow us to start contemplating these questions. Which, as I see it, is vital, for if we can’t successfully ask and answer such questions, the future of the community will be shaped by economic forces alone. And to understate the case, the future those forces will produce may not be the future desired by the community as a whole.

Overview

In Growth Begets Growth: Jackson Hole’s Evolving Taxable Economy in the Era of COVID, I draw four basic conclusions and identify two major challenges facing the community.

The four basic conclusions are:

• Economically, the pandemic is no longer a significant issue for Jackson Hole.
• Tourism is no longer driving Jackson Hole’s economic growth. Instead, growth itself is driving growth – not just in Jackson Hole, but across the greater Tetons region.
• Economics is dividing Jackson Hole into three increasingly incompatible tribes.
• Summer 2021 and beyond will place extraordinary growth-related stresses on not just Jackson Hole’s economy, but the community as a whole.

The two major challenges are:

• Maintaining the community’s character in the face of a rapidly-evolving economy.
• Preserving and protecting the area’s ecosystem

Each is explored below.

Four Conclusions

Conclusion #1: Economically, the pandemic is behind us

To be clear about what’s truly important, the COVID-19 pandemic has taken a horrible toll on individuals, families, the nation, and the world. It’s wreaked havoc on not just the economy, but our communities, our physical and mental health, and pretty much every aspect of life. Very little of this has been good, or even neutral.

We must also recognize the pandemic is still raging. While the rapid growth in vaccinations is providing hope, COVID-19 is still sickening and killing people, still disrupting lives, and still threatening to come roaring back should we prematurely let down our guard.

All of this noted and honored, Jackson Hole’s overall economy hit its pandemic-driven nadir in mid-summer 2020, and by October was exceeding its 2019 pre-pandemic levels. Most notably, since bottoming out in September, taxable sales have regained 60% of their losses. At current growth rates, total taxable sales could be back at their pre-pandemic peak by mid-summer.

Graph 1

And it’s not just taxable sales. Graph 2 combines a variety of economic and tourism metrics, showing monthly changes in each between 2019 and 2020. By June every metric was improving; in each of 2020’s three final months, essentially every metric save commercial airline enplanements was ahead of its 2019 level.

Critically, while Jackson Hole’s collective economy is well on the way to recovery, many businesses and individuals are still struggling. At a minimum, they need our sympathy and concern; ideally they need our support.

Graph 2

Conclusion #2: Growth is driving our growth

While tourism remains the most important piece of Jackson Hole’s taxable economy, its relative importance has been waning for several years. In its place, economic growth is being driven by Build & Equip-related sales (i.e., residential development and its attendant purchases).

This is why, during 2002’s nine months of “pure pandemic” (i.e., April-December), Teton County’s taxable sales fell only 7%. Break the data into Tourism-related purchases versus Build & Equip-related purchases, and during those same nine months Tourism-related purchases fell 23%, while Build & Equip-related purchases rose 20%.

Graph 3

Taking a longer-term look, during the six years from 2013-2019 – i.e., before the pandemic – Tourism-related sales grew at a compounded annual rate of 8.8%, while Build & Equip sales grew at 12.0% per year. Expand the time frame to include the pandemic – i.e. from 2013-2020 – and the seven year compounded annual growth rate for Tourism falls to 4.0%, while the Build & Equip rate grows to 13.1%.

Graph 4

The fact that $1.8 billion worth of property was sold in Jackson Hole in 2020 suggests the growth in Build & Equip will not abate, but instead almost surely accelerate – the COVID migrants buying vacant lots will want to build on them, and the folks spending millions on new homes will want to furnish, refurbish or remodel them. And since money won’t be an object for many of these folks, all the pieces seem to be there for a continuing Build & Equip boom.

Two other factors will also likely to contribute to Build & Equip becoming increasingly important to the local economy. One is that like attracts like – the more COVID migrants and other well-to-do folks who move to Jackson Hole, the more attractive it will become to like-minded people.

The other factor is that most new Jackson Hole residents have no direct economic connection to Jackson Hole’s economy. As a result, they will be less likely to support tourism, especially at the ballot box (e.g., support will likely wane for the Lodging Tax and pro-tourism candidates). As that happens, it will become increasingly difficult for the Tourism industry to continue to grow at the rates it has become accustomed to and, in many cases, needs to meet its financial targets.

Conclusion #3: We’re dividing into three tribes

Among the other trends the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated is the division of Jackson Hole and the surrounding region into three economic tribes.

The first tribe is those involved in tourism, a group anxious to make up for the big losses they suffered during the pandemic. Happily for them, their prospects seem good – by all indications Americans are eager to travel, disinclined to go overseas, and especially interested in national parks.

The second tribe is those working in Build & Equip industries. Coming out of their best year in at least a decade, the Build & Equippers are eager to keep the good times going.

Finally, there’s Everyone Else. While those not involved in Tourism surely appreciate the amenities tourism makes possible, they also seem to be increasingly impatient with increasing crowds, worsening traffic, and the other consequences of a growing tourism industry.

All this lays bare an issue that has always been there for Jackson Hole, but has never reached critical mass – the lack of direct economic alignment between the three tribes.

For generations, the community’s consensus view was that the region’s economic health depended on a strong tourism base. This view was bolstered by the facts that: a) many residents had at least an indirect financial stake in tourism’s success, and b) all other economic activities were essentially ancillary to tourism.

As technology has rendered Jackson Hole’s geographic isolation less constricting, though, this consensus view has been eroding. With increasing velocity, Tourism’s importance to the community’s economy is diminishing, while other economic drivers are gaining ground (particularly investments and location-neutral jobs, which have no direct connection to either tourism or, more broadly, the community as a whole). As this shift continues, the community will need to develop a new consensus about both tourism and how we develop our remaining private lands.

Conclusion #4: We face extraordinary growth-related stresses

Several qualities will hallmark the remainder of 2021:

• Record numbers of tourists.
• Record amounts of construction.
• Record demand for employees.
• Record shortage of rental housing for workers.
• Record effective population (due to a combination of a record number of tourists, a record demand for local employees, increasing numbers of location-neutral workers, and a record number of seasonal and permanent residents lured here by COVID-related concerns).

If, in turn, much or all of this comes to pass, several outcomes are likely:

• An epically-overworked and under-housed tourism workforce. Coming on top of a year of pandemic-related stresses, this will likely lead to a decline in service quality, increased burn-out, and the like.
• Record amounts of traffic
• Exceptional pressure on the region’s public lands, especially the national forests (as the national parks have greater resources and greater ability to control crowds).

If, in turn, much or all of this comes to pass, it will likely exacerbate the fracturing of the community into tribes, with Tourism competing with Build & Equip for workers and workforce housing, and Everyone Else railing at both Tourism and Build & Equip for compromising their quality of life.

Longer-term, the key issue will be addressing the issues created by the increasing strength of Jackson Hole’s location-neutral economy versus the increasing diminution of its tourism economy. Two specific threats loom large:
Maintaining a sense of community as location-neutral income increasingly overwhelms locally-derived income (e.g., when renting or buying a home, those earning location-neutral income can easily out-compete those earning locally-derived income); and
Figuring out how to adequately fund local government when it receives essentially nothing from location-neutral economic activity.

Two Challenges

Challenge #1: Maintaining the community’s character

“Location-neutrals” are people earning their living from remote-work jobs and location-neutral investment income. As Jackson Hole’s population of location-neutrals grows, it’s becoming increasingly unclear how these folks will connect with the community.

Certainly not economically – someone earning their living by working remotely will care far more about national or global occurrences than local hotel occupancy rates or Grand Teton visitor days.

But absent that – absent a culture informed by many people working in tourism and most everyone else removed from the industry by only a degree or two of separation – what will bind us together? What will dampen the centrifugal forces pushing us apart from one another? What will sustain a culture where, as legend has it, you don’t know whether the person next to you is a liftie or a millionaire?

That is the fundamental threat facing Jackson Hole’s character. How do we maintain the “we’re all in this together” quality when, increasingly, we’re not all in it together? At least not economically.

For generations, people have moved to Jackson Hole for a variety of reasons, but stayed for a common one: they fell in love with the community. They stayed because it was home to a group of people willing to accept a harsh climate, geographic isolation, and other privations in exchange for the privilege of living in a place of beauty and wonder; a group of people who shared the ineffable sense that, rather than your job or your bank account, what mattered in life was the world around you.

Over the past several decades, this has slowly changed. As a result, Jackson Hole is increasingly feeling like every other haunt of the well-to-do.

In some ways, this homogenization is the inevitable outcome of America’s economic and social system, one which incentivizes turning something unique into a commodity. But because most American communities are organized around economic self-interest, there is no road map for Jackson Hole to follow should tourism cease to bind us together.

All this creates an extraordinary challenge for not just Jackson Hole, but the entire Tetons region and beyond.

The challenge is this: In the face of rapid technological change and extraordinary economic pressure, can the greater Tetons community find a way to hold onto the qualities that make it a community? Or will it succumb to the forces of homogenization, and in so doing undermine the bonds that form its distinctive character? The answer is far from clear, especially because there are really two questions here:

• Can Jackson Hole can chart a different course?
• Does Jackson Hole even want to chart a different course?

There is no clear answer to either question.

Challenge #2: Preserving and protecting the area’s ecosystem

Historically, two factors have molded Jackson Hole’s character: the region’s ecosystem, and the sacrifices born of its geographic isolation.

Today, thanks to changes in technology, the economy, and transportation, living in Jackson Hole requires increasingly fewer sacrifices. What remains intact is the ecosystem – it’s the one thing that binds together the community’s three tribes of Tourism, Build & Equip, and Everyone Else.

Unfortunately, though, the ecosystem faces two threats.

One is from the region’s influx of built amenities, the golf courses and spas and trappings of commerce that make every high-end community in the world increasingly look and feel and behave like every other high-end community in the world. These amenities are wonderful, but they are also commodities. More importantly, they also distract residents and visitors from fully appreciating just how extraordinary the region’s natural qualities are.

The other threat is the pressures on the region’s ecosystem. Some of these threats – most notably climate change – are basically beyond local control. Others, though, can be addressed locally.

Groundwater pollution. Habitat fragmentation. Road expansion. All these and more are things we can control, because all are the result of us taking our ecosystem’s health for granted.

But we can’t take it for granted. Want proof? 97% of Teton County’s land is publicly owned – the second-highest percentage of any county in the nation. Yet despite this extraordinary level of ecosystem protection. many of our streams are rated as “polluted.” A surprising amount of our groundwater is fouled. And a growing amount of our large mammal habitat is becoming fragmented.

All this and more is exactly what’s occurred in every other once-pristine place on the planet. As a result, we’re in the process of learning what these other places have already learned: Pursuing economic growth while ignoring environmental consequences doesn’t work out well for ecosystems.

Sadly, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that this approach isn’t working out well for Jackson Hole, either – we may be special, but in this regard we’re not unique.

Where Jackson Hole is unique, though, is in how dependent we are on the health of our ecosystem. Why? Because it’s the foundation of not only our region’s economy, but also its character.

Combined, our ecosystem and our character are driving our economy’s boom, attracting free-spending tourists and Build & Equippers even in the face of the worst public health crisis in a century. Yet because of that boom, we risk compromising both the health of our ecosystem and the distinctiveness of our character. And should we do that, we’ll render ourselves just another community with high-end amenities located in a beautiful setting.

There are lots of beautiful places with high-end amenities, but lots of places aren’t Jackson Hole. Our community’s history suggests we are capable of not only envisioning a different, better, and forward-looking way of doing things, but turning that vision into reality. Indeed, doing so is at the core of the community’s character.

The question now is whether that character can survive the extraordinary technological and economic pressures buffeting Teton County. If it can, it will be because the community has recognized that, while economic health is necessary, it is not sufficient. Indeed, prioritizing economic health over all other considerations is antithetical to what Jackson Hole has been for its entire history. It will also be fatal to keeping it Jackson Hole the special – if not unique – place so many, many people want it to continue to be.

Bonus Analyses

Bonus Analysis #1 – How we’re coping

Graph 5 shows the monthly sales of local liquor stores.

The magenta-colored bars show sales from April 2020 – January 2021; i.e., the 10 full pandemic months for which data are available. The light purple bars are the same 10 months the year before.

During the 10 pandemic months, local liquor store sales were up 17.5% over the same 10 months the year before.

As the pandemic wore on, liquor store sales grew even faster. During the most recent seven months of July 2020 – January 2021, liquor store sales were up 22.1%. Some of this may have been due to the growth in tourism during the second half of 2020. It’s also fair to assume, though, that some of it was due to locals increasingly finding solace in a bottle from the slow-but-relentless grind that has hallmarked the pandemic.

Graph 5

Bonus Analysis #2 – How we’re equipping

When it registers with the state, every business selling taxable goods in Wyoming is assigned the four digit North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS) code appropriate for its industry.

The first two digits of the NAICS code represent a broad industrial category. For example, “44” and “45” are both Retail. The third and fourth digits indicate a more specific sub-category; e.g., 4421 is “Furniture Stores,” 4422 is “Home Furnishings Stores,” and 4431 is “Electronics and Appliance Stores.”

For me, perhaps the weirdest single sales tax-related figure coming out of the entire pandemic was one showing that, in January 2021, an out-of-state business classified as an “Other Miscellaneous Store Retailers” reported selling $24.6 million in taxable goods to people living in Teton County.

This figure was epically huge, exceeding the category’s sales for the previous 5.5 years combined. As a result, I called Wyoming’s Department of Revenue to see if it was a typo. They did some research, and confirmed it represented the December 2020 sale(s) made to Teton County residents by just one business in Washington, DC.

Additional research showed that the “Other Miscellaneous Store Retailers” category is comprised of five sub-categories:

• 453910 – Pet and Pet Supply Stores
• 453920 – Art Dealers
• 453930 – Manufactured (Mobile) Home Dealers
• 453991 – Tobacco Stores
• 453998 – All Other Miscellaneous Store Retailers

Piecing it together, in December 2020, someone living in Teton County purchased from a Washington DC vendor:

• $25 million in pets and/or pet food; and/or
• $25 million worth of double-wide trailers; and/or
• $25 million in fine Cuban cigars and other tobacco products; and/or
• $25 million worth of art.

In this game of Clue, my bet is on a well-to-do resident purchasing $25 million in art for their Jackson Hole home. Yet more proof of the growing importance of Build & Equip-related expenditures to Teton County’s economy.

And at that one household, it must have been a very merry Christmas indeed.

Graph 6

Bonus Analysis #3 – The coming train wreck

Since the beginning of 2005, I have measured the column inches of Help Wanted and Rental Housing ads in each week’s Jackson Hole News&Guide. Although a variety of internet-based classified ad forums have popped up in recent years, by all indications the News&Guide’s classified ads remain the region’s foremost medium for Help Wanted and Rental Housing advertising.

Graph 7 shows what’s occurred with Help Wanted ads over the last 16-plus years. The solid blue line is the 52 week running totals; the blue bars are each week’s column inches.

The graph’s big takeaway is that Help Wanted ads quickly respond to downturns in the local economy – they nose-dived following the onset of the Great Recession, and did so again once the pandemic hit. Over the last few months, though, they’ve begun to climb again.

Graph 7

Graph 8 is structured like Graph 7, but looks instead at Rental Housing ads. The two trends basically move in opposite directions: When there’s a big demand for workers, housing supply goes down; and vice-versa.

The striking thing about Graph 8 is what’s happened over the last several months. After remaining fairly steady through the end of last summer, over the past seven months the News&Guide’s 52 week running total of Rental Housing ads has been in free-fall. It hit its all-time low in the first week of December 2020, and has set a new low every week since.

Graph 8

For every week’s paper since the beginning of 2018, Graph 9 shows ratio of Help Wanted ads to Rental Housing ads. In the most recent edition of the News&Guide, for every one column inch of Rental Housing ads there were eight full columns of Help Wanted ads – an entire page plus one additional column.

Driving this dynamic has been the ever-shrinking amount of Rental Housing listings. How bad is it? In the 16 years of newspapers ending with the 2020 Thanksgiving edition, only 16 editions – 0.8% – had 10 inches or fewer of Rental Housing ads. In the 17 papers since Thanksgiving 2020, every single one has had 10 inches or fewer. And only two of them had as many as 10 inches.

Graph 9

As Graph 10 indicates, employers sense there’s a problem looming.

In particular, looking at the six weeks between early February and mid-March – i.e., the six weeks before the pandemic struck in 2020 – 2021’s Help Wanted ads ran 22% ahead of 2019’s count, and 26% ahead of 2020’s.

Most striking of all, though, is that the News&Guide’s March 24, 2021 issue had a level of Help Wanted ads not normally seen until late May.

Combine this level of Help Wanted anxiety with the record-setting shortage of rental housing, and it seems likely that summer 2021 will be highlighted by a record demand for labor and a record shortage of housing. Then throw in anticipated record tourism levels plus a year of accumulated pandemic-related stress, and it seems likely the coming months will be a pressure cooker for all those living and working in Jackson Hole.

Knowing this, it will serve us well if we can reach even deeper into our reserves of patience, understanding, and empathy for all those working to keep the community going.

Graph 10

To download pdf version of the three papers examining different facets of Jackson Hole’s economy, please follow these links:

Jackson Hole’s pandemic-era economy
Jackson Hole’s pandemic-era real estate market
Jackson Hole’s government funding

Hello,

I’m finalizing this newsletter on Election Day.

Like many Americans, I’m obsessed, anxious, on edge; a number of feelings I’d rather not experience, thank you. Yet there they are.

I’m also experiencing two related qualities: listlessness and vulnerability. The listlessness makes it hard to focus, to get anything done. The vulnerability makes me feel even worse for my lack of production – I sense that I’m somehow weak for not being able to overcome the listlessness underlying my lack of production, not to mention my sensitivity to every little thing.

Why mention this? Because I’m a perfectionist. Damn it. In each of these newsletters, I strive for not just perfection (no typos, no grammatical errors, every sentence a polished gem) but profundity. If I’m asking someone to take time to read what I write, I’d better make it extraordinarily worth their while.

My belief-cum-fear is that today’s installment falls short of profundity. Instead, it’s just basic gruel. Not thin, but not rich and meaty either. For which I offer my sincerest apologies.

Instead, what you’ll find below is mostly just a report on what I found in the community surveys I conducted in June, September, and October. Information with a little bit of commentary, but nothing I’d categorize as earth-shattering.

Is it interesting? I think so, but you might not. Will it rock your world? Doubtful. And that reality leaves me feeling flat. If I don’t get the information out in a timely fashion, though, it won’t be relevant. Hence this newsletter – one written before I can make it something I consider profound.

What many readers might find interesting are the comments, ones I’ve chosen and copied verbatim as representative of the 371 comments September’s 207 respondents offered. Hence I’ve structured the Table of Contents so you can jump straight to them if you’d like.

Table of Contents

October 2020 “State of Our Community” Survey: Summary and Methodology
Summary
Findings
Comments
COVID-19 and Well-Being/Outlook
Questions
Comments: Personal Future
Comments: Jackson Hole’s Future
Comments: Region’s Future
Comments: America’s Future
“Returning to Normal” and How the Economy Will Fare
Questions
Comments
Who Are You Voting For? Who Will Win? – Federal
Comments
Who Are You Voting For? Who Will Win? – Local
Comments
General Comments

A thought

I will make one observation, though.

I’m currently listening to Nixonland, the second of of four books by historian Rick Pearlstein on the rise of the contemporary Republican Party. Just yesterday, I came across this passage:
“Part of Richard Nixon dreamed of world peace. Part of him gave the public something it wanted as much, or more: an outlet for their hatreds…”

I share this because, like so much of the book, it seems tremendously applicable to this moment. The late 1960s/early 1970s era chronicled in Nixonland were a time of extraordinary upheaval in our country, a period of tremendous polarization, domestic violence, and profound uncertainty about not just what was going on, but what the future might hold. For all of his dreams and all the good he did, Mr. Nixon also fanned the flames of that polarization, leading to consequences that not only brought him down but reverberated through subsequent decades. Indeed, through today’s election and beyond.

Why mention this? Because what reverberates through the surveys evaluated in this newsletter – captured especially poignantly in the comments – is how much people love this place, this community, this country. And, regardless of political persuasion, how very concerned they are about the future. In my obsessing I may be crazy, but I’m not alone. And neither are you. What comes through to me from the surveys is respondents’ love and fear and passion for something better in our world.

What might that be?

This is where I take off my analyst’s beanie and put on my community leader ballcap. Once we get past today’s election (or whenever the results are finalized), I think it will be extraordinarily important for those in leadership – at all levels – to articulate not just a shared and optimistic vision for our future, but a plan for how all of us can start moving toward that vision.

I’ve got a dim sense of what that future might look like for Jackson Hole and the surrounding region, one I’ll be exploring in future newsletters. But man, it’s a really dim vision. To bring it into focus will require your help, feedback, and thoughts about how we get from where we are to where we want to be. Which, in my view, is a community as extraordinary as the setting in which we live. In other words, a community, region, and world that CoThrive.

As always, thanks so much and stay healthy!

Cheers!

Jonathan Schechter
Executive Director

October 2020 “State of Our Community” Survey: Summary and Methodology

Summary

Since COVID-19 struck, I’ve taken several surveys to assess respondents’ feelings about how the pandemic is affecting them, and how it might affect our community’s economy.

The original idea was to see if, collectively, respondents could accurately guess where our economy might be headed. To put it mildly, that didn’t work out so well, for the economy fared much better than the collective guess (more on that in a future newsletter).

As a result, I’ve focused the three most recent surveys – mid-June, mid-September, and late October – on how people are faring during the pandemic. The results suggest four big conclusions.

First, as a rule of thumb, people have fared better economically than they originally feared would be the case. Perhaps as a result, they are also less pessimistic about the community’s economic situation.

Second, this does not mean people are optimistic, whether about themselves or the community. Instead, respondents seem to be both weary and wary – weary from COVID fatigue and, arguably, the political chaos that has rocked our nation and community; wary because there is still so much uncertainty on the pandemic, economic, and political fronts.

Third, I have no idea how representative my newsletter subscribers or the survey respondents are of Jackson Hole or the greater Tetons region. What I do know is that around 90% of people responding to the most recent survey are voting not just for Joe Biden, but for other Democrats running for federal office in Wyoming.

As a result, to the extent subscribers – or at least the subset who responded to the survey – are representative of the community, come 24 hours from this writing, the community is going to be either manically euphoric or in a slough of the deepest despond.

Fourth, what makes this particularly clear to me is that, during the middle of my September surveying period, Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. Those who responded before her death were noticeably more optimistic than those who responded after her death. Similarly, the October responses were more optimistic than the September responses, which I suspect is due to how much more likely it became during that time that Joe Biden would win (when the September survey closed, FiveThirtyEight.com gave Biden a 77% chance of winning; on October’s closing date it was 89%)

I offer these politically-based observations because a theme cutting through all of the surveys I’ve taken – captured most acutely in the comments – is that the Jackson Hole community is as polarized as the rest of the nation. We may have a disproportionate number of Trump haters, but in the depth of their feelings, our Trump lovers and Trump haters are as as impassioned as folks anywhere.

At least as significant is our saving grace, though. The thing that ties all of us together – Trump lovers and Trump haters and those at a remove – is their passion for Jackson Hole. Their love for the place and their desire to keep it extraordinary. That, too, shines through the surveys.

Whatever happens in the elections, that will be the foundation upon which we can begin to build the next four years and beyond.

One final note. As you’ll see in the comments, some survey respondents criticized me for asking about how they were voting. I did so not to influence or pry, but because I am very curious about how representative my readers and respondents are of the community overall. Voting patterns seemed the clearest way to measure that, and I’ll soon have a sense of how well the two match up.

Methodology

The October 2020 survey was conducted between October 26 – 29, a four day window versus the week-long window of previous surveys.

207 people responded to this survey, down from the 388 of September’s and the 270 of June’s. Whether this was due to a shorter window, survey fatigue among the e-mail list, and/or something else isn’t clear.

Despite a significantly different number of responses, the demographic makeup of the survey respondents was very much alike

• ~80% Teton County WY residents
• Lived in the region an average of around 23 years
• ~20% retired

A number of questions asked respondents to give a score of -5 to 5, where -5 was absolutely bad and 5 was absolutely good.

COVID-19 and Personal Finances

Findings

• Respondents’ mean income is ~$180,000, with around 40% of respondents earning <=$100,000, 25% earning $100,000-$150,000, and 33% earning more than $150,000
• ~14% of respondents considered themselves living paycheck-to-paycheck, including some people earning $100,000 or more.
• In September, the figure was 18%; in June it was 17%. I don’t think October’s decline is statistically significant
• Question: “How much has COVID-19 affected you financially?”
  • Summary: Not much
    • Perhaps a slight improvement since June
  • October responses: Mean = -0.1; Median = 0; Mode = 0
    • September: Mean = -0.2; Median = 0; Mode = 0
    • June: Mean = -0.6; Median = 0; Mode = 0
• Question: “Since COVID-19 struck, how has your income changed?”
  • Summary: A slight decline from previous years
    • Given how the mean figures have changed, perhaps COVID-19 has harmed local incomes a little less than originally feared
  • October responses: Mean = -5%; Mode = 0%
    • September: Mean = -6%; Mode = 0%
    • June: Mean = -8%; Mode = 0%
• Question: “Since COVID-19 struck, how have your expenditures changed?”
  • Summary: For those whose incomes were affected by COVID, there’s been a clear decline from previous years. For everyone else, little change.
    • October’s mean figure was lower than September’s but higher than June’s, suggesting people remain worried about their incomes being harmed.
  • October responses: Mean = -10%; Mode = 0%
    • September: Mean = -9%; Mode = 0%
    • June: Mean = -11%; Mode = 0%

Comments

• CARES Act $ is saving our household
• I feel like I have aged 5 years in one
• I miss the loss of touch: hugging my family and friends; standing close; seeing facial expressions. But, never have I watch birds at the feeder so intently; leaves unfolding and dropping; clouds. A new learning to see.
• over population & heavy tourist numbers have degraded the environment & quality of life
• physical doing fine…mental…getting tired of being “quarantined”…need to be able to be with friends and family and to travel
• Physical health has remained as good as before, but mental health issues (stress levels, anxiety, depression) have definitely been more pronounced
• This answer has changed: -5 when family had covid. Better now. But Trump/elections = more stressful.
• This community and there level of fear based controlling people has affected everything I do here now. I was born and raised here and I don’t event recognize this place anymore. It is heartbreaking.

COVID-19 and Well-Being/Outlook

The responses in this section are summarized in Graph 1 (below).

Questions

• Question: “To what degree has COVID-19 affected your life personally?”
  • Summary: COVID-19 seems to be slowly wearing down respondents
    • Things seem to be slightly improved from September, and similar to June.
  • October responses: Mean = -1.5; Median = -1; Mode = -1
    • September: Mean = -1.6; Median = -2; Mode = -2
    • June: Mean = -1.2; Median = -1; Mode = -1
• Question: “How optimistic are you about your personal future?”
  • Summary: Respondents seem tentatively optimistic about their personal futures
    • Since June, there has been a sense of stasis regarding personal optimism – a whiff more than in September, but basically unchanged over the past several months.
  • October responses: Mean = 0.6; Median = 1; Mode = 1
    • September: Mean = 0.6; Median = 0; Mode = 0
    • June: Mean = 0.9; Median = 0; Mode = 0
• Question: “How optimistic are you about Jackson Hole’s future?”
  • Summary: Respondents seem to be warily pessimistic about Jackson Hole’s future
    • Respondents were notably more optimistic about Jackson Hole’s future in June than they are today
  • October responses: Mean = -0.6; Median = -1; Mode = -1
    • September: Mean = -0.7; Median = -1; Mode = -2
    • June: Mean = 0.4; Median = 0; Mode = 2
• Question: “How optimistic are you about the Tetons region’s future?”
  • Summary: Respondents are slightly pessimistic about the region’s future, but less so than they are about Jackson Hole’s. A notable contingent of respondents is clearly optimistic about the region’s future.
    • Respondents’ slight pessimism didn’t change much between September and October, save for more expressing a notable optimism.
  • October responses: Mean = -0.3; Median = 0; Mode = 2
    • September: Mean = -0.4; Median = 0; Mode = 0
    • June: Not asked
• Question: “How optimistic are you about America’s future?”
  • Summary: Respondents are similarly pessimistic about the nation’s future as they are about Jackson Hole’s
  • October responses: Mean = -0.8; Median = -1; Mode = 0
    • September: Mean = -1.7; Median = -2; Mode = -3
    • June: Mean = -0.8; Median = -1; Mode = -2

Graph 1

Graph 2

Comments: Personal Future

• A great deal rides on the election.
• Sorry to say, there are a number of indicators that appear to be headed the wrong direction
• Worry about leadership of this country and distressed over the divisiveness,worried about the people I help and lack of health care,disruption of education,degradation of community and environment, global warming and the seemingly obvious signs that are not being addressed.

Comments: Jackson Hole’s Future

• Concerned about the numbers of people visiting and moving here – quality of life and environment.
• Definite concern over the future of Jackson…housing issues for working folks, sense of community, ongoing influx of extreme wealth
• I no longer consider Jackson Hole a desirable place to live. I am exploring other places to move to.
• I see the economy of Teton County booming as people continue to flock to the region for recreation and to escape densely populated areas, but I see difficult times ahead for our working class families as housing becomes even more scarce and expensive.
• I’m worried about the impact a large group of wealthy people will have on our community.
• It’s heartbreaking that all of these nonprofits exist to help people, but I essentially keep being told that I don’t qualify for one reason or another. I have BEGGED for help, and people essentially throw their hands up. I have work in non-profits for 13 of the 15 years that I have lived here and feel that I gave significantly to me community, but now that I’m in need people are shutting the door in my face.
• No affordable housing, rising income inequality, declining water quality, too much traffic on 22 possibly leading to 4 lanes and attendant construction problems especially during the construction period, declining availability of service workers, too many people unwilling to wear masks to address COVID
• The influx of new residents has dramatically changed the vibe and disparity of many things including traffic, (aggressiveness on the roads), shopping for food and a much changed attitude in the former “local” community, with a level of general anger I’ve not seen before. In short, many of the new residents seem little interested in adopting a more laid back lifestyle and seem to hole-up in their enclaves, 3 Creek Ranch, Shooting Star…
• Too many people coming who don’t care about the community and environment. Commercial growth and people who aren’t part of the community wanting to invest in housing here has put so much pressure on housing. We will never build our way out of it, but we will destroy ourselves trying.
• too much emphasis on bring/growing tourist economy…. we’re saturated and won’t be able to catch up with infrastructure
• Wyoming, Teton County and JH have many challenges. COVID is accentuating them. The income gap is a curse and blessing. Hospitality and Tourism based economies have too many externalities. Locals get whipsawed.

Comments: Region’s Future

• Again, as much as I feel like I have given this community, it continues to push people like me out. I work for the school district and have a decent job, but have to live in government subsidized housing and have to go to the food bank to eat. I am heartbroken and exhausted, but have no where else to go.
• flood of new arrivals will bring negative pressure on our environment, our quality of life, as well as, ultimately, our politics
• I still see negative forces at work in the greater Tetons, but they are not as strong as in Jackson Hole.
• I think these communities will continue to grow and thrive by gaining young, working class people who are interested in being positively involved in their community
• The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem saw much of the same increase in traffic and tremendous (negative) impacts to our public lands and resources that we saw here in Jackson Hole this summer. This type of visitation and use is not sustainable.
• Unless we protect our wildlife and ecosystem, we will lose what makes this place so special

Comments: America’s Future

• A negative 5 if Trump is re-elected, a positive 1 if Biden is elected
• Biden is about to usher in socialism and high taxes. Jobs will implode
• Congress doesn’t address America’s many problems, society/government increasingly polarized, decline in civility, foreign policy failures and former allies distrustful of US, potential funding issues at federal level due to $27 trillion debt and possible rise in interest rates which would squeeze social programs/education funding
• Depends entirely on the presidential election. Currently, we seem to only focus on the stock market as our gauge of how the economy is doing. The pandemic response has been pathetic and frightening, and I’m disappointed by the attitude of so many Americans. I also am alarmed about how little priority we place on our natural resources and protection for individuals (water quality, air quality, food regulations, etc.)
• Long after we are all dead and gone, they will continue to clean up the damage caused by the first 4 years of the Trump administration. Should there be another 4 years or more, all is lost.
• Wow. Our Republicans leadership has abandoned the rule of law, the courts, the environment and the poor and middle classes. It’s going to take a lifetime to rebuild, if it’s even possible in this time of waning civic responsibility.

“Returning to Normal” and How the Economy Will Fare

Questions

• Question: “When will Jackson Hole no longer have to worry about COVID-19?”
  • Summary: Respondents seem to be warily pessimistic about Jackson Hole’s future
    • Respondents were notably more optimistic about Jackson Hole’s future in June than they are today
  • October responses: Most frequent was Autumn 2021 (17% of responses)
    • Other high responses: Autumn 2021 (16%), Summer 2022 (12%), and Never (12%)
  • September responses: Most frequent were Autumn 2021 and Never (both 17% of responses)
    • Other high responses: Spring 2022 (14%), and Summer 2021 (11%)
  • June responses: Most frequent was Spring 2021 or later (49% of responses)
    • Other high response: Never (21%)
• Question: “How will Autumn 2020 end up comparing to Autumn 2019?”
  • Summary: Respondents were notably more optimistic about Jackson Hole’s future in June than they are today
  • Responses (Mean scores, by survey month):
    • Change in overall tourist visits
      • October: 13%
      • September: 9%
      • June: -27%
    • Change in driving-based tourist visits
      • October: 19%
      • September: 17%
      • June: -17%
    • Change in flying-based tourists visits
      • October: -5%
      • September: -11%
      • June: -38%
    • Change in total taxable sales
      • October: 3%
      • September: 0%
      • June: -29%
• Question: “How will Ski Season 2020/21 compare to Ski Season 2019/20?”
  • Summary: Respondents were notably more optimistic about Jackson Hole’s future in June than they are today
  • Responses (Mean scores, by survey month):
    • Change in overall tourist visits
      • October: -7%
      • September: -5%
      • June: -25%
    • Change in driving-based tourist visits
      • October: 2%
      • September: -3%
      • June: -18%
    • Change in flying-based tourists visits
      • October: -10%
      • September: -11%
      • June: -33%
    • Change in total taxable sales
      • October: -7%
      • September: -6%
      • June: -27%

Comments

• I think that the people that come to visit Jackson are truly oblivious to the problems here, because that is the persona that Jackson fights to maintain. That we’re carefree, that we are actually able to enjoy the outdoors, that we love our lives; while in reality we’re stressed, we can’t go to the parks or on hikes or find a moment of solidarity due to the overcrowding that tourists create, we can only enjoy the reasons that we live here in September (and that’s obviously fleeting), and we’re stressed and depressed because we have to work so hard to live here and still live paycheck to paycheck. People always say “It’s so nice that you live in Jackson”, but it’s not that. I work my ass off to live in Jackson for a community that isn’t thankful and is only supportive when they need to hype up what they do to receive Old Bill’s donations.
• I’m hoping the mountain resort restricting ticket sales will decrease the crazy influx of tourists, but I think we will still have a lot of tourists like we did this summer
• Much will depend on how much the government gets involved. That may over rule personal decisions to travel.

Who Are You Voting For? Who Will Win? – Federal

• President
  • Who are you voting for?
    • Joe Biden (D) – 88% (Barbershop Poll result – 58%)
    • Donald Trump (R) – 13% (42%)
  • Who will win?
    • Joe Biden (D) – 80%
    • Donald Trump (R) – 20%
• US Senate
  • Who are you voting for?
    • Merav Ben-David (D) – 80% (47%)
    • Cynthia Lummis (R) – 20% (53%)
  • Who will win?
    • Merav Ben-David (D) – 6%
    • Cynthia Lummis (R) – 94%
• US House of Representatives
  • Who are you voting for?
    • Lynette Grey Bull (D) – 79% (46%)
    • Liz Cheney (R) – 21% (54%)
  • Who will win?
    • Lynette Grey Bull (D) – 2%
    • Liz Cheney (R) – 98%

Graph 3

Comments

• It infuriates me that my vote doesn’t count on a national level.
• These feel like extremely inappropriate questions that don’t have to do with the rest of your survey, coming from a sitting elected.

Who Are You Voting For? Who Will Win? – Local

• Teton County Commission
  • Who are you voting for?
    • Christian Beckwith (R) – 19% (Barbershop poll result – 13%)
    • Greg Epstein (D) – 19% (20%)
    • Wes Gardner (I) – 18% (22%)
    • Peter Long (R) – 11% (25%)
    • Natalia Macker (D) – 33% (20%)
  • Who will win?
    • Christian Beckwith (R) – 12%
    • Greg Epstein (D) – 27%
    • Wes Gardner (I) – 15%
    • Peter Long (R) – 21%
    • Natalia Macker (D) – 33%
• Town of Jackson Mayor (non-partisan)
  • Who are you voting for?
    • Michael Kudar – 27% (51%)
    • Hailey Morton Levinson – 73% (49%)
  • Who will win?
    • Michael Kudar – 35%
    • Hailey Morton Levinson – 65%
• Town Council (non-partisan)
  • Who are you voting for?
    • Jessica Sell Chambers – 17% (20%)
    • Pete Muldoon – 22% (12%)
    • Jim Rooks – 36% (36%)
  • Devon Viehman – 25% (32%)
  • Who will win?
    • Jessica Sell Chambers – 9%
    • Pete Muldoon – 12%
    • Jim Rooks – 40%
    • Devon Viehman – 38%
• 1% increase in sales tax
  • How are you voting?
    • Yes – 71% (42%)
    • No – 29% (58%)
  • Which will win?
    • Yes – 55%
    • No – 45%

Graph 4

Graph 5

Graph 6

Comments

• Had to tighten my belt. Ditch the raise and clean up the budget
• I belive we truly need the extra money, however people think it will not be used wisely.
• I think it’s time to explore other tax structures. While “tourists pay it,” so do locals, and the working poor in Jackson will pay a higher percentage of their income on purchases; the shopkeepers will also have people wanting to shop elsewhere where the sales taxes are lower. Isn’t Idaho Falls at 6%?
• what is wrong with the people who are voting against it? sales tax is regressive but we need it. Start the income tax in Wyoming and get on with paying our bills. We also need to tax property transfers.

General Comments

• I am so-o-o disappointed by the politicals allowing expansion of Snow King to continue the deterioration of our valley and expect the Forest Service to allow Targhee to expand unnecessarily. We’ve forgotten about the environment, the wildlife, and the values that used to make Jackson Hole a unique place. Now it’s just another Disneyland!
• i do not understand why we continue to build hotels and otherwise increase tourism when we cannot handle the traffic issues that we already have and have had for years.
• I doubt this will be a very good reflection of this community. Low income community members, and service industry workers are not likely to participate due to poor outreach.
• I hope we avoid bloodshed in the wake of this election. tRump has dog whistled (at a minimum) every armed nutcase in the country to be at the ready if things don’t go his way. If they attacked the pizza parlor to free Democrat sex slaves, I fear that they’ll be out in droves for this event! Hope not…
• I work in workforce services and I am very concerned about the worker shortage in Teton County. I am worried that people will conveniently stay on unemployment …if another CARES (or similar) package rolls out. We are having a difficult time filling job orders for employers b/c claimants don’t want to return to work if they have UI benefits.
• I would just love to see more support in this community that is honestly, not just aimed at Hispanics. There are a lot of Caucasian, middle aged, working class people who NEED assistance, but are running into walls because they do not “qualify”. I think that the support for Hispanics is incredible, but PLEASE do not make that, whether overtly or not, a defining factor in who receives help.
• I’m feeling depressed and angry about our town’s progressive leaning being under attack by the right wingers who have state and national help. I don’t trust the right wing candidates and believe that trey are mostly lying to get into office. It’s as if we al went to sleep just like when Obama got elected and didn’t see the right wing backslash coming at us.
• Like a lot of people, I’m just disappointed in the lack of civility and honesty in American politics right now. I don’t see how this is going to be corrected. Also disappointed in Wyoming which, although always a Republican dominated state, was also generally a reasonable political atmosphere that put a priority on care of Wyoming children and families. I fear that has changed dramatically.
• Our federal lands can’t carry the burden of this level of visitation. Why should the Bridger-Teton NF have to pay for more employees, volunteers, port-a-potties, etc. and be the primary charge dealing with all the dispersed camping we saw this summer? Where is the Chamber? Lodging Tax? Teton County? The Chamber’s efforts at outreach to the visiting public was disappointing. The national parks, refuges, forests, BLM, etc. can’t take on this tremendous burden of additional trail use, rescues, trash, etc. There needs to be more funded partner employees, ambassadors, etc. As far as traffic, I don’t have a solution other than to be honest in outreach and let people know they can expect frustrating traffic congestion during much of the spring, summer, and fall.
• So many national surveys that are gauging people’s mental state right now are blaming it on Covid. I think the divisive politics are much more to blame than the pandemic for my mental state.
• There are too many folks with “good ideas” trying to influence/control what others think and do.
• There needs to be ethical non-partisan behavior from the Jackson Town Council and County Commissioners.
• This community really needs to figure out a sustainable balance between the booming real estate market/sales, new development and building of new hotels and how to build and make available enough affordable housing to sustain the workforce that supports all businesses and development in this community. This pandemic has really escalated this issue and we are approaching an uneven balance where there will soon be a huge shortage of available employees in this valley.
• This is a tough time to be a Teton County and Town of Jackson resident. The assholes are winning and outspending everyone else. We can screw this place up in only 4-5 years – as Trump has demonstrated in DC – and we’re now on the map for big money and influence buying. It scares the hell out of me.

Hello,

We’re eight days out out from Election Day, a reality which forms the somewhat-loose focus of this newsletter.

It has two basic parts.

October Survey

Please take my October survey. It will close at 11:59 pm this Thursday, October 29, and the typical response time is only about 7 minutes.

This month’s survey asks essentially the same questions as last month’s, with the goal of seeing how the community is feeling. It also has a few questions about next week’s elections, for I’m curious to see how politically-representative of the community survey respondents are.

I’ll conduct a similar, post-election survey in November, giving me – and you – a sense of how the results have affected our views of the world.

Changes, and Not Just the Seasons

I’ve written an essay around the general theme of change, weaving together thoughts about national and local political races, local tourism dynamics, and how we might move beyond the weariness so many of us are feeling.

Thanks so much, stay healthy, and be sure to vote!

Cheers!

Jonathan Schechter
Executive Director

PS – Please be sure to take the survey https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/VPRTCZL Please feel free to forward this link and/or this newsletter to others, and ask them to take the survey as well. And again, it closes at 11:59 MDT this Thursday, October 29 – don’t delay!

PPS – If you’re wondering: “What about the results of September’s survey?”, the answer is that, due to data glitches, I couldn’t get the results processed in a timely fashion. I’ll include that analysis with the results of the October survey.

Chaos and Constancy

Since COVID-19 hit, I’ve never had such a powerful sense of living through history.

In a related vein, since Donald Trump became president, my dream investment has been in a product that replenishes the human adrenal gland. The chaos that seems to be Mr. Trump’s stock-in-trade leaves me depleted, and I suspect I’m not alone in that.

COVID-19 has, of course, made matters worse. As I’ve noted before, COVID is like a vise, with its slowly-increasing pressure exposing our fault lines and creating new fissures. Add Mr. Trump and COVID together, and I’m guessing a whole lot of folks are feeling a whole lot of drained.

My fervent desire to move beyond this wretched state has led me to obsess on the presidential race. As I noted in my most recent e-newsletter, one way I’ve channeled that obsession is creating a spreadsheet tracking FiveThirtyEight.com’s daily forecast of the presidential race. And because I’m anal like that, I track not only the overall race, but FiveThirtyEight’s forecast for each state.

Why mention this? Because looking at the data between August 31 and October 25, what hit me was not chaos and upheaval, but instead a rather boring consistency.

Put simply, for the past eight weeks, the race has been marked by only two dynamics: Mr. Biden’s chances of winning have either stayed flat, or they’ve slowly grown.

In particular, as Graph 1 below shows, the last eight weeks of FiveThirtyEight’s forecasts can be divided into four phases:

Phase I

• Mr. Biden’s chances on August 31 were 68%. 11 days later, they were 75%, a daily growth rate of 0.9%

Phase II

• Mr. Biden’s chances on September 11 were 75%. 17 days later, they were 77%, a daily growth rate of 0.2%

Phase III

• Mr. Biden’s chances on September 28 were 77%. 15 days later, they were 87%, a daily growth rate of 0.9%, the same as during Phase I

Phase IV

• Mr. Biden’s chances on October 13 were 87%. 13 days later, they remain at 87%, a daily growth rate of 0.0%

Graph 1

What’s really striking, though, is that the same pattern has occurred not just nationally, but in key swing states.

For example, two clusters of states are currently front-of-mind for those obsessing about the presidential race. The “Blue Wall” states are the three industrial states that traditionally vote for the Democrat, but which Mr. Trump narrowly won in 2016: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The ones I refer to as “Sunbelt States” are also ones Mr. Trump won in 2016, but are now considered in play: Arizona, Florida, and North Carolina. Here’s what’s happened to each of them during the four phases.

Phase I

• National: Mr. Biden’s lead grew at a daily rate of 0.9%
• Blue Wall: Mr. Biden’s lead grew at a daily rate of 1.0%
• Sunbelt: Mr. Biden’s lead grew at a daily rate of 1.2%

Phase II

• National: 0.2%
• Blue Wall: 0.1%
• Sunbelt: -0.2%

Phase III

• National: 0.8%
• Blue Wall: 0.5%
• Sunbelt: 1.5%

Phase IV

• National: 0.0%
• Blue Wall: 0.0%
• Sunbelt: -0.4%

Add all this together, and my big takeaway is that things have been remarkably stable. And unless Mr. Trump, that consummate shaker-upper, can shake things up so powerfully in the last week of the campaign that he can win all six of these states and several more, then the calm, methodical tortoise that is Mr. Biden’s campaign will end up prevailing over the chaotic hare that is Mr. Trump’s.

Which leads into local politics.

The Nationalization of Local Politics?

The Jackson Town Council is comprised of a mayor and four councilmembers. The mayor’s spot and two of the four council seats are up this year (my term expires in two years). As won’t surprise you, I’m watching both races closely.

Which is why, the other day, I was surprised to see ads for local candidates on the website Politico. Specifically, I saw a series of rotating ads for one of the two mayoral candidates (Michael Kudar) and two of the four town council candidates (Jim Rooks and Devon Viehman). All three ads were well done and shared a similar look and feel, and obviously I was seeing them because of some algorithm targeting my location and demographic.

My first reaction was how much things had changed in just the past two years. When I ran in 2018, I put ads on Facebook and Instagram at the suggestion of some millennial friends. But I never conceived of placing ads on a national news platform like Politico, much less other news websites. Yet in the past 48 hours, I’ve seen this same cluster of town council candidate ads on the sites of the middle-of-the-road Newsweek, the ultra-liberal San Francisco Chronicle, and the ultra-conservative Manchester (NH) Union Leader.

What really knocked my socks off, though, was that the ads were not paid for by the candidates. Instead, in itty-bitty letters, each ad featured the disclaimer that the ad was paid for by Turning Point Action, a non-profit political advocacy group affiliated with the deeply conservative Turning Point America. The disclaimer also noted “(this ad) is not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.”

Extremely curious, I reached out to all three candidates, each of whom told me they didn’t know the ads were running.

I also reached out to Jackson Hole resident Foster Friess, who provided seed funding for Turning Point America and is on both its Honorary Board and its Advisory Council. I did so because I wanted to know how a council race in a town of 10,000 could attract the attention of a national political advocacy group. Foster, too, said he didn’t know.

Absent any other information, I assume Turning Point Action’s involvement in our local race is an extension of its involvement in robocalls and other mass outreach this summer when rumors were flying about the town council defunding Jackson’s police. Then, too, I tried to figure out how Turning Point Action became involved in the affairs of a small Wyoming town; then, too, I hit only dead ends.

Why mention this? Because my sense-cum-dread is that Turning Point Action’s efforts will, in hindsight, be looked upon as a watershed moment in Jackson Hole’s political history, the time when local campaigns pivoted from being homey, retail affairs to ones increasingly nationalized in both money and message. Should this occur, it will be a real tragedy, for reasons ranging from increased divisiveness to the likelihood it will further discourage people from running. I so hope I’m wrong; I so fear I’m right.

Farewell Fall Off-Season?

Speaking of watersheds, this may be the year when we look back and say “2020 was when we lost the autumnal off-season.”

Here’s what I mean.

For August 1 – October 11, Graph 2 shows the 7 day average of traffic entering Yellowstone National Park from the park’s South Gate; i.e. from Jackson Hole. The lighter red line shows the 2019 counts, the darker red line shows the 2020 counts, and the pink bars show each day’s growth between 2019 and 2020.

Two things jump out.

First, between September 2019 and September 2020, the South Gate’s seven day average daily traffic count increased 38%. It increased literaly every day – by a minimum of 24%, and on one day by a whopping 72%. As a result, even though historically August is Yellowstone’s second-busiest month, in September 2020 28 percent more vehicles entered Yellowstone from Jackson Hole than entered in August 2019.

Building on this theme, in August 2019, the busiest daily traffic count was 1,726. In comparison, every day in September 2020 exceeded the August 2019 count. Further, October 2020’s first 11 days were 119% ahead of October 2019’s first 11 days.

The rest of Yellowstone also saw increased traffic this fall, but nothing like the numbers seen at the South Gate.

Graph 2

And it’s not just cars. As Graph 3 shows, the Jackson Hole Airport’s private jet flight count hit 50 on just one day in September 2019 . In September 2020, there were at least 57 private jet flights every day, and eight consecutive days had between 71-75 flights.

Further, during the first 11 days of October, October 11 was the only day with fewer than 50 private jet flights from the Jackson Hole Airport – on that day the number dipped to 49.

Graph 3

Conclusions

Tying all this together, here’s what I’ve concluded.

My point of departure is that I’m weary. Most folks I know are weary too. Sadly, because of the realities of calendar, weather, and viral transmission, it’s likely that one of the root causes of our collective weariness – COVID-19 – will be with us for a while.

I take solace in a couple of thoughts, though.

First, I find it easier to deal with a problem if I can understand it. Collectively, for four years we’ve been dealing with a national political environment disproportionately shaped by someone who cultivates chaos. For the most recent eight months, that upheaval has been amplified by COVID-19, which has completely disrupted every facet of our lives, individually and collectively.

Locally, all this has been compounded by crazy increases in tourism, which the community and region have had to handle with fewer resources than normal. And it can’t be helping things that, as evidenced by huge spikes in both private jet traffic and high-end real estate prices, there seems to be a tidal wave of money pouring into Jackson Hole. This only amplifies the pressure felt by the bulk of the region’s residents who aren’t wealthy.

To add the final soupçon of craziness, all this stress seems to be spilling over into our local political races, which are proving to be as fraught and frayed as our times.

Second, I also find it easier to deal with a problem if I know there’s an end in sight. In this case things are tricky, for COVID-19 and its attendant baggage are likely to be with us for a while.

But with the onset of winter weather, it seems likely that the valley’s tourism crush will soon let up, giving us all a bit of respite. And even if the results aren’t known until a day or three after November 3, the additional pressure created by the election will, one way or another, soon be behind us.

Finally, barring something extraordinarily weird occurring – which, granted, we should probably expect – if the FiveThirtyEight numbers are reliable, the epicenter of national chaos will soon be gone.

Which leads into my final point.

I love my community, my country, my planet. Yet for far too often during the past four years, America has seemed like an exceptionally alien place to me. We Americans have not just thought and spoken and behaved in ways that strike me as un-American, but we’ve seemed to embrace those who’ve taken that approach.

Given this, my hope is that, once the election is behind us, our collective fever will break, and we’ll start to recover from the crazed delirium that’s ravaged and depleted and contorted us the past four years. We won’t recover at once, of course – it takes time to get over being really sick. But my further hope is that as we do improve, we’ll look back on this past stretch and ask ourselves: “What just happened? We had to be very ill indeed, because that’s not who we are – as individuals or society.”

Will this happen? I don’t know. But where are we without our dreams?

Please take my October survey.
It will close at 11:59 pm this Thursday, October 29
The typical response time is only about 7 minutes.
CLICK HERE TO TAKE THE SURVEY

As I wrote about earlier this month, in late June Jackson Hole’s summer of 2020 turned from calm to chaotic.

As measured by traffic through Yellowstone’s South Gate (at Jackson Hole’s north end), tourism to the Tetons was sporadic through June 25– some days were busier than in 2019; others slower.

Since June 26, though, daily traffic through Yellowstone’s South Gate topped 2019’s numbers essentially every day. The pattern still holds.

Graph 1 shows the running totals for number of vehicles passing through Yellowstone’s South Gate between July 15 and September 16. During those two months, traffic going into Yellowstone from Jackson Hole was up an astonishing 41 percent.

Graph 1

(Note: I used the July 15 – September 16 dates because they match up with the best reliable data I have from the Jackson Hole Airport.)

In contrast, the combined traffic counts at Yellowstone’s four other gates – from West Yellowstone MT, Gardiner MT, Cooke City MT, and Cody WY – were up just 13 percent (Graph 2).

Graph 2

My big, self-obvious conclusion: if it felt frantic this summer, it’s because it was frantic.

Things were very different at the airport. At least at first blush.

I serve as the liaison between the Jackson Town Council and the two local air travel-related boards: the Jackson Hole Airport board and Jackson Hole Air Improvement Resources, which runs our local airline subsidy efforts. One thing I’ve learned in that role is that, like other US airports, the Jackson Hole Airport has no ability to regulate who flies into or out of the airport – locally, we can control only what occurs on the ground.

Another thing I’ve learned is how profoundly disruptive COVID-19 has been for America’s airlines. As a result, their schedule this past summer was constantly changing in response to the demand for flights, or lack thereof.

Locally, that meant the Jackson Hole Airport had 22 percent fewer commercial flights over the past couple of months than during the same period in 2019 (Graph 3)

Graph 3

(Note: To make the sometimes-scattered airport activity data easier to understand, Graphs 3-6 use 7 day averages; e.g., the figure for July 15 is the average number of flights each day between July 9 and July 15.)

But that’s just the commercial flights. As Graph 4 shows, since mid-July, private jet traffic into the Jackson Hole Airport was up by one-third over 2019’s level. In fact, for each of the 64 days between July 15 – September 16, the 7 day average number of flights was higher in 2020 than in 2019.

And of course the private jet traffic during that 64 day stretch in 2019 was busier than in 2018. Which was busier than in 2017. Which was busier than in 2016…

Graph 4

Why focus on air traffic? For a few reasons.

One is that air traffic is a good indicator of how busy Jackson Hole is. Not the best indicator, perhaps, but not a bad one either.

Another reason is that private jet traffic is arguably a very good indicator of how attractive Jackson Hole is becoming to those wealthy enough to afford private jet travel. (If you have a spare 1 minute and 20 seconds here’s a great satiric take on this phenomenon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmrUZCih-aQ)

The third and most important reason, though, is the noise of it all.

My understanding of Jackson Hole has been greatly enriched by getting to know Bernie Krauss, a bio-acoustician who has been seminal in developing the concept of soundscape ecology; i.e., “the study of the acoustic relationships between living organisms, human and other, and their environment.”

What Bernie helped me understand is how significantly sound can affect how we experience the world. (Follow this link to learn more about Bernie’s work: http://www.wildsanctuary.com/index.html)

In this auditory context, two realities shape the relationship between Jackson Hole and its airport.

One is that the Jackson Hole Airport is the only commercial airport in a national park.

The other is that the shape of the Jackson Hole valley dictates flight patterns. In particular, there are only two directions air traffic can go: over the park, or over the Town of Jackson. As a result, increased air traffic means increased numbers of planes coming in at low altitude – noisy altitude – over the town or park.

Which, to understate the case, is annoying for anyone under a flight path. Especially this year, when COVID-19 is wreaking havoc on everyone’s peace of mind.

But are this year’s airplane-related noise concerns actually grounded in fact? Or are they just a symptom of our COVID-stressed times? To find out, I did a bit of simple math.

Step 1 was to assume the airport was active 14 hours/day, from 7 am to 9 pm. Step 2 was to divide the resulting 840 minutes by the number of flights per day to see how frequently planes were using the Jackson Hole Airport.

Graph 5 divides the 840 minutes by the total number of planes using the airport each day: commercial and private, jets and propeller-driven. Last year, between July 15 and September 16 there were an average of 115 such flights/day, meaning a plane was using the Jackson Hole Airport every 7.3 minutes. This year, the numbers were 122 flights/day and 6.9 minutes – a slight increase in frequency, but not a major one.

Most striking was that far more planes used the Jackson Hole Airport during August 2020 than in 2019. As a result, for essentially every day in August 2020, planes came into and out of the airport much more frequently than they did in the typical day in 2019. Chalk one up for busy-ness.

Graph 5

But that weren’t nothin’ compared to 2020’s private jet traffic.

As Graph 6 shows, using the 7 day averages, between July 15 and September 16 2020 there was a private jet over Jackson Hole every 12 minutes: 5 times per hour, 14 hours per day. This was 26 percent more frequent than in 2019.

Speaking more directly to the annoyance factor, on nearly three-quarters of the days in 2020, there were more private jets using the Jackson Hole Airport than on the busiest day in 2019.

Graph 6

Switching gears slightly, this past Monday my Jackson Town Council colleagues and I granted the Snow King ski area a new long-term lease to use town-owned land in Phil Baux Park. This will allow Snow King to build a new gondola from town property at the base of the mountain to its summit.

I supported the measure, but before I voted I offered the following remarks:

“For many years, now, Jackson Hole has increasingly attracted those who seem eager to exploit the community, taking from it far more than they give back. The COVID-19 pandemic has only accelerated this process, attracting people eager to take advantage of all our region has to offer without any sense of how to give back, or even that they should give back.”

Whether or not it’s fair, there is no more visible indicator of the wealth pouring into Jackson Hole than private jets. The airport numbers confirm that which any sentient observer has sensed, namely that private jet activity was way up this summer.

In future newsletters, I’ll explore the implications of all this new wealth. For now, the hatch of private jets over the Tetons is a many-times-per-hour reminder that Jackson Hole is in a state of rapid growth, change, and gentrification.

With Labor Day behind us, it’s time to assess Jackson Hole’s economy during the summer of 2020.

Or at least take a first crack at it. Data never come in as fast as I prefer, but during the first few days of September I received two pieces of data – daily traffic counts for Yellowstone National Park, and the August report of taxable sales in Teton County – that can serve as the foundation of a bit of analysis, especially as it relates to the effects of COVID-19 on the local economy.

This newsletter consists of three basic parts:

1. Yellowstone Summer Traffic Data
2. Teton County’s Taxable Sales During the First Four Months of COVID-19
3. Analysis
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A request

One other note, or more precisely, a request: Will you please make a tax-deductible donation to my Charture Institute to support the work we do, including the analysis I provide in CoThrive?

Jackson Hole is in the middle of Old Bill’s Fun Run season. Thanks to the generosity of community-minded donors, Old Bill’s matches donations received by every local non-profit – last year, every dollar donated up to $30,000 was matched around 50%.

Please CLICK HERE to donate on-line.

Because of COVID-19, this year Charture has been deprived of one of our primary revenue sources: our annual 22 in 21 conferences. This makes donations such as yours all the more important.

The deadline for Old Bill’s giving is Friday September 18 @ 5:00 pm MDT. CLICK HERE to make your donation

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts, reactions, and comments.

Jonathan Schechter
Executive Director

I. Yellowstone Summer Traffic Data

Yellowstone National Park has five entry gates. Working clockwise from the park’s northern entrance, these are:

• North (from the gateway city of Gardiner, MT)
• Northeast (Cooke City, MT)
• East (Cody, WY)
• South (Jackson Hole, WY)
• West (West Yellowstone, MT)

Typically, each gate opens for the summer in late April or early May. This year, the two Wyoming gates opened on May 18, while the three Montana gates didn’t open until June 1.

The combination of the delayed opening and the nation’s struggles with the coronavirus resulted in a slow start to Yellowstone’s summer, with visitation during the park’s first several weeks markedly lower than in 2019. Starting in late June, however, things changed rapidly.

For the Jackson Hole gate, the switch seems to have flipped on June 26. From May 18 – June 25, only 8 percent of the days saw 2020 traffic counts higher than those in 2019. From June 26 – August 31, though, 96 percent of 2020’s days had higher traffic counts.

Graph 1 (below) looks at this phenomenon, comparing the number of vehicles entering Yellowstone in 2019 v. 2020 for three periods (for May, just the two Wyoming gates were counted):

• May 18 – June 25
• June 26 – August 31
• the total summer of May 18 – August 31

Graph 1

The big takeaway? During the summer of 2020, the growth in Yellowstone’s traffic was driven by traffic coming through the South Gate; i.e., from Jackson Hole.

In particular:

• during the first half of summer, the Jackson Hole gate had the lowest decline in traffic;
• during the second half of summer, the Jackson Hole gate had the biggest increases in both number of vehicles and percentage growth of traffic;
• for the overall summer, without people coming into Yellowstone from Jackson Hole, overall park traffic would have been down.

Which is why it felt so darned busy here.

(Note: Because the main road through Grand Teton National Park is a US highway, Grand Teton cannot provide the same kind of traffic data.)

II. Teton County’s Taxable Sales During the First Four Months of COVID-19

Data geek preface

Before getting into the data, three data-geek notes.

First, industrial codes. When you get a Wyoming business license, the Department of Revenue categorizes your operation using one of 10,000 North American Industrial Classification Codes (e.g., code 4441 is “Building Material and Supplies Dealers”). These codes are used when reporting taxable sales, and form the basis of this analysis.

Second, the sales taxes you collect in any given month must be sent to the state by the end of the following month. The state then tabulates the taxes it receives and issues its monthly report. For example, taxes you collect in July must be sent to the state by the end of August, so August’s report generally reflects sales in July. By extension, July’s report reflects June’s sales, etc. April was the first complete month that COVID-19 affected the local economy, meaning its effects were first fully captured in the May 2020 report.

Third, taxable sales account for only around 15 percent of Teton County’s economy. However, they are the best proxy we have for local economic activity because they are the only meaningful economic data reported accurately and regularly. Sales taxes also provide around 2/3 of local government general revenue – Jackson Hole is more dependent on sales taxes than the state of Wyoming is on hydrocarbons.

Onto the data.

The data

The first thing the data tell us is that, while COVID-19 clearly hammered the local taxable economy, even before COVID Teton County’s taxable sales economy was slowing down. For example, during the reporting months of January-August 2018, taxable sales grew 10 percent from the previous year. For those same months in 2019, the growth rate was 4 percent.

Then COVID-19 hit, and during the same January-August period this year local taxable sales fell 11 percent. As Graph 2 shows, in just four months the local taxable sales economy gave up over 1.5 years’ worth of growth.

Graph 2

It did so by dropping 20.5 percent during the four reporting months of May-August 2020 versus the same four months in 2019. (Graph 3)

Graph 3

What’s interesting, though is how unevenly the pandemic has affected Teton County’s taxable sales.

At a macro level, Teton County’s taxable sales fall into four basic categories:

1. Retail
2. Lodging
3. Restaurants
4. All Other

During the pandemic, sales in all four categories have declined. Get a bit more granular, however, and things are not quite as simple as they appear.

Graph 4 does two things. First, it breaks the four categories of local taxable sales into seven:

1. In-store retail (a subset of the larger Retail category)
2. Lodging
3. Restaurants
4. Construction (a combination of sub-categories in both All Other and Retail)
5. Car Sales (All Other)
6. On-line retail (Retail)
7. All Other

It then breaks the seven categories into two customer groupings: businesses patronized by a combination of Tourists and Locals, and those whose clientele is Primarily Local.

Graph 4

Two points jump off this graph.

First, broadly speaking, since COVID-19 hit, businesses associated with tourism have done poorly, while those catering to locals have done well.

Second, on-line sales are booming. Exactly how much of this growth is due to increased sales isn’t clear, for about a year ago Wyoming became more diligent about taxing on-line sales. That noted, it’s clear that a goodly portion of the 68 percent jump in on-line sales-related taxes is due to residents opting to use their devices to shop.
Graph 5 provides more detail about Retail sales, which is Teton County’s largest category in terms of sales.

Graph 5

Here again, COVID-19 wreaked havoc on Retail businesses catering to tourists, while seemingly benefitting those stores locals turned to for shelter-in-place supplies. Hence the growth in Liquor sales and those related to Home Improvement. Ditto Sporting Goods (because it’s too small to warrant its own category, Sporting Goods is lumped under “All Other”).

One other point worth noting about the local Retail scene is that Kmart shut down right before COVID-19 struck. The data suggest it generated around $3.5 million in annual sales, the loss of which is also lumped into “All Other.” Back Kmart out of the equation, and the decline in “All Other” was only 35 percent instead of 38 percent.

III. Analysis

The conclusions I draw from the data fall into three categories:

1. All the tourists; 60% of the capacity
2. The importance of locals
3. The importance of construction

1. All the tourists; 60% of the capacity

Both gut feeling and Yellowstone traffic data tell us July and August produced a bumper crop of tourists to Jackson Hole. Further, while we won’t have actual numbers for another few weeks, it seems likely that August’s sales tax numbers will be decent – not a record, but not nearly as bad as anticipated by most folks, including respondents to my spring surveys.

What the data won’t reveal is that, from a tourism infrastructure perspective, Jackson Hole handled all those visitors with one arm tied behind its back.

Friends object when I use the term “industrial tourism,” but I think it’s a fair description of Jackson Hole’s tourism industry. I don’t mean it as a pejorative, for to me the world’s economy is replete with industries producing highly sophisticated, highly-customized products. Like Jackson Hole’s tourism experience.

As with other world-class industries, tourism in Jackson Hole depends on a finely-tuned infrastructure, with a number of linked parts working closely with and complementing each other. Lodging, restaurants, retail, guides, transportation, cleaning services – all these and more must coordinate with one another to provide a high-quality and, with increasing frequency, high-end experience for the region’s visitors.

In this context, what was striking about this summer was how well this mechanism worked despite COVID-19.

COVID’s biggest blow to the local tourism infrastructure was the capacity reductions it forced upon Lodging and Restaurants. The hotels in Yellowstone and Grand Teton opened 40 percent of their rooms at best, some restaurants around the region converted to take-out only, and even those restaurants that did serve dine-in customers did so at no more than 60 percent capacity. Most other tourism-related industries dealt with their own challenges. Yet somehow it all worked.

Mostly. Talking to merchants and employees, the degree of end-of-summer burn-out seems to be at an all-time high, for workers had to knock themselves out to deal with a summer hallmarked by higher-than-usual tourist numbers and lower-than-usual staffing levels. All that plus the many other stresses of this most unusual summer.

The other thing I wonder about is what lessons employers will draw from this summer’s experience. Of particular interest is the fact that, for most tourism-related businesses, labor is the single biggest expense. Will this summer teach employers that they can save money by using fewer employees in the future? If so, at what price to the employees who are hired? And at what price to the visitor experience?

None of this is knowable right now. But given the extraordinary adaptability local businesses displayed during this extraordinarily challenging summer, I have to believe we’ll look back upon 2020 as a watershed in the internal mechanics of the local tourism industry, with it emerging leaner and, in all likelihood, more profitable.

2. The importance of locals

Graph 6 looks at the changes in four local economic indicators during June and July of 2016-2020.

The green bars are the percentage change in recreational visits to Grand Teton National Park. Building on the categories used in Graph 4, the yellow bars are the change in taxable sales by those businesses catering to tourists or a blend of tourists and locals.

The blue bars are a crude proxy for per-tourist spending, and show the result of dividing the yellow bars’ tourist-cum-blend sales into the green bars’ number of Grand Teton visitors. Finally, the red bars – the ones to pay attention to – are the taxable sales by businesses catering to locals.

Graph 6

The graph’s basic point is that sales to locals are becoming an increasingly important part of our summer economy. This was true even before COVID-19 thoroughly disrupted our tourism economy, and coronavirus or not, there’s no reason to think the trend won’t continue in future years.

Will summer sales to locals ever dethrone summer sales to tourists? Of course not. But as our population grows, and as it becomes ever-harder to cram even more tourists in here, sales to locals will likely grow faster than sales to tourists.

That noted, let me flag an utterly predictable exception. Next summer is almost certain to show a big jump in the growth of sales to tourists. Why? Because the ” in that calculation will be this summer’s knocked-down-by-COVID spending number. Reduce any ” enough, and big growth is bound to follow.

This “reduce the denominator” dynamic is the same one we’re currently seeing nationally with the sharp percentage growth in job numbers – the coronavirus knocked employment down so far that high growth rates became inevitable. And to editorialize just a wee bit, it’s at best disingenuous for Mr. Trump to take credit for those job increases if he wasn’t willing to assume responsibility for the decreases preceding them…

3. The importance of construction

The thing that most surprised me about the sales tax data was this.

For the reporting months of May-August 2020, taxable sales in the Lodging and Restaurant categories fell 27 and 48 percent respectively. Those drops were so sharp that, when combined with the 7 percent rise in Construction-related taxable sales, Construction-related sales actually eclipsed those of both Restaurants and Lodging.

As Graph 7 shows, that’s never happened before. Not even close.

Graph 7

This is, no doubt, a one-off occurrence – I expect that when next month’s numbers are reported, both Lodging and Restaurants will be back in their usual places, jockeying to see who plays second fiddle to Retail in terms of biggest category of taxable sales.

I highlight the construction figure, though, because it shines a light on a larger phenomenon, one that’s gotten lost in the chaos of not just COVID-19, but also the incredible growth pressures Jackson Hole has been and is facing.

For the past couple of decades, it’s become increasingly easy and acceptable for people to telecommute. As that’s occurred, Jackson Hole has become increasingly attractive to both primary and second home owners. In turn, that has produced two booms: in our non-tourism economy; and in the pressure for ever-more housing in the entire Tetons region.

In two ways, COVID-19 has thrown gasoline on the growth fire. One is that it has scared people away from crowded urban areas. The other is that it has produced a boom in working remotely. Combined, the result is a new wave of people moving to places like the greater Tetons region.

All this has created even more pressure for new construction, particularly housing.

As Graph 8 shows, this is not a new phenomenon. Indeed, since the beginning of 2015, Construction has been Teton County’s fastest-growing category of taxable sales.

Graph 8

Why does this matter? Because of the potential that the development industry will develop a momentum of its own, becoming so powerful that local elected officials will have a hard time saying “no” to its demands, regardless of those demands affect the rest of our community.

The Jackson/Teton County Comprehensive Plan is supposed to prevent this sort of imbalance from occurring. Indeed, the plan’s Vision Statement reads: “Preserve and protect the area’s ecosystem, in order to ensure a healthy environment, community and economy for current and future generations.” To that end, the Comp Plan and its related tools actively attempt to guide the amount and location of commercial and residential development in both the county and town.

That guidance is increasingly being questioned, though, by those who feel the Comp Plan is too restrictive. One particular concern is that it errs on the side of long-term environmental quality at the expense of today’s pressing needs.

Although the soundness of that argument is debatable, what’s undeniable is the importance of the local construction industry:

• There are about as many businesses in Construction as in Retail, Lodging, and Restaurants combined.
• Construction employs nearly as many people as Retail and Restaurants (although only 40 percent of those working in Lodging).
• The typical Construction job pays around twice as much as the typical Retail, Lodging, or Restaurant job.

Perhaps most striking is that, over the past 10 years, Teton County ranks 7th out of 3,112 US counties in per capita construction jobs, eclipsed only by counties recovering from Hurricane Katrina and those experiencing a fracking boom. Those, and Nantucket, where construction workers commute from the mainland on a daily basis.

Long story short, Construction not only plays a significant role in Teton County’s economy, but is growing in importance vis-a-vis tourism. Combine that with the essentially limitless demand for housing in Jackson Hole, and it seems almost inevitable that the pressure for new development will only increase over time. Doubly so should development slow down – given how large the industry is, how many folks it employs, and how much money is at stake, a slowdown in Construction will cause great disruption across the region.

The question then becomes what kind of community we are. Vision Statements such as the Comp Plan’s are developed not for the good times, but for when an organization is stressed: A Vision Statement’s fundamental purpose is to serve as a North Star for guiding decisions in difficult times.

The Comp Plan’s Vision Statement ranks a healthy economy third behind a healthy environment and healthy community. It does so because the plan’s animating belief is that if we preserve and protect our ecosystem, we and future generations will enjoy not just a healthy environment, but a healthy community. If we have those two things, a healthy economy will follow.

That much is clear. Less clear is whether we and subsequent generations will continue to agree with this formulation. The fact that no other place on the planet prioritizes environmental health over economic growth suggests those who embrace the Comp Plan’s current Vision Statement are, over the long run, fighting an uphill battle.

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Hello,

Welcome to the June 25, 2020 edition of the CoThrive newsletter.

First things first. Today’s my son’s birthday. He’s the apple of my eye, the spring in my step, the light of my life. He’s also 32, which is inconceivable (especially given that I feel no more mature today than I did the day he was born). I’m also confident that no father can bestow upon his son a greater birthday gift than a blog post discussing tourist visits to Yellowstone and Jackson Hole’s taxable sales – the happiest of birthdays, Alex.

The previous edition of CoThrive was published five days ago (click here to read it). In it, I looked at the first four week’s of this summer’s visitation to Yellowstone, and found that, for several days in mid-June, traffic counts through the South Gate (i.e., coming into Yellowstone from Jackson Hole) were essentially the same as they were in 2019. Since then, I’ve gotten additional visitation data, showing a drop. That kind of volatility is likely to be this summer’s theme.

The remainder of this edition focuses on how COVID-19 affected Jackson Hole’s taxable sales economy in March and April, the most recent months for which data are available.

• Yellowstone Visitation: May 18 – June 20
• Taxable Sales During COVID-19: Introduction
• Two Quick Explanatory Notes
• Big Picture
• Sales by Season
• COVID-19-related Losses in March & April
• How Locals Spend Money
• On-line Purchases
• Looking Ahead

The combined big take-away of the two pieces of research? This summer, Jackson Hole’s economy may end up doing better than we feared.

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts, reactions, and comments.

Jonathan Schechter
Executive Director

Yellowstone Visitation: May 18 – June 20

This summer, on a weekly basis, Yellowstone National Park has been kind enough to provide daily vehicle counts for each of its five weeks. Since my last newsletter, I’ve received an additional five days of data, and present them below in Figures A and B.

Yellowstone’s South Gate (Figure A) is its entry point from Jackson Hole. During the park’s first three weeks of being open in 2020, South Gate visitation was down markedly from the same days in 2019: 37%, 36%, and 41% respectively. Since the second full week of June, however (the week of June 8-14), visitation has picked up markedly – down just 9% the week of June 14, and 26% for the six days ending June 20.

Yellowstone’s overall visitation has not been as strong (Figure B). Of its four major gates (excluding the lightly-used Northeast Gate near Cooke City), traffic from the South Gate has clearly been the strongest.

Taxable Sales During COVID-19: Introduction

In the first week of June, the Wyoming Department of Revenue issued its most recent monthly sales tax collections report.

This was noteworthy because it provided the first comprehensive sense of how Teton County’s economy (at least its taxable economy) performed during a time of near-complete COVID-19-related economic shutdown.

Before exploring the data, though, a couple of contextual notes are in order.

Two Quick Explanatory Notes

Sales month v. reporting month

Let’s say you own a doughnut shop in Jackson, and sold $1,000 worth of doughnuts in April. By the end of May, you would be required to send Wyoming’s Department of Revenue $60 for the six percent sales tax levied on those sales. At the beginning of June, the department would combine your payment with all the others it received from Teton County in May, and send out the results. That was the report I received.

I mention this because the May report generally, but not perfectly, reflects sales in April. Why not perfectly? Because your $60 check would be included in the May report only if it arrived in May. If instead it arrived in June, it would be included in that month’s report. Similarly, if you check covering March sales arrived in May, it would have been counted in that month’s report. Big picture, though, May’s report generally reflects April’s sales, April’s report generally reflects March’s sales, etc.

The analysis below is drawn from the April and May reports, which reflect March’s and April’s sales, respectively. References are to the sales months, unless the term “report” is used (as in “May’s report”).

NAICS codes

The other thing to know is that, when the state issued the business license for your doughnut shop, it assigned a North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS) code to your account. There are 10 million such codes, including 7222133 for “Doughnut Shops: This industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in selling doughnuts, for consumption.” (This begs the question of what doughnuts are for if not consumption, but I digress.)

Using these codes, the state issues two reports of taxable sales by industry. The “Major” report identifies 20 different categories of industries using two digit NAICS codes (your doughnut shop falls under NAICS 72: “Accommodation and Food Services”). The “Minor” report classifies all of Teton County’s businesses into one of 306 different categories using the first four digits (your doughnut shop falls under 7222 “Limited Service Eating Place”).

These codes are the basis of the analysis below.

Big Picture

According to the May, 2020 sales tax report, Teton County’s merchants sold $62.3 million worth of taxable goods during April.

This represented a drop of 14.9 percent from April 2019’s sales. Yet because our economy was in a medically-induced economic coma in April, to me this not-even 15 percent drop seemed surprisingly small. Certainly it was smaller than the drop seen the previous month (reflecting March’s sales – Table 1). What happened?

Sales by Season

The first clue to explaining April’s relatively small drop lies with how taxable sales ebb and flow during the year. Historically, April and November vie for the slowest month of the year. As Figure 1 shows, over the past two years April has had the lowest percentage of Teton County’s total taxable sales, and May has ranked third.

The reason, of course, is that April is when the ski areas close and many residents go on spring break. If you make the crude assumption that the number of tourists who ski in early April balances out the number of locals who leave for spring break, then the April figure becomes a rough proxy for pure local spending.

Which, as Figure 2 shows, basically matches up with visitation data. Averaging the amount of monthly activity at the Jackson Hole Airport with that of Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks, March and April are very slow (especially if you consider that much of late March’s air traffic is locals getting out of town for spring break).

The long and the short of it is that, if we had to get shut down by COVID-19, we got exceptionally lucky that the period affected was mid-March through mid-May. Arguably no other time of year would have been so fortuitous.

COVID-19-related Losses in March & April

Knowing the seasonality of our taxable sales also helps us better understand why May’s drop was surprisingly low.

Here’s a little basic math. As our baseline, let’s use the total amount of taxable goods local merchants and hoteliers sold during the fiscal year that ended February 29: $1.66 billion. Let’s also assume that the local tourism economy shut down on March 16, the day Jackson Hole Mountain Resort and Grand Targhee shut down.

Had COVID-19 not struck, then using Figure 1’s monthly taxable sales percentage, in March we would have expected to see $1.66 billion x 6.7%, or $111 million in taxable sales.

Instead, in March we got $87.3 million in total sales, a total decline of $23.8 million (21%) from the expected amount. (Table 2)

Do the same calculation for April, and we would have expected to sell $1.66 billion x 4.6% = $76.3 million worth of taxable goods. The actual, however, was only $62.3 million, a $14.0 million decline (18%).

Combined, in March and April Teton County’s taxable sales were $37.8 million lower than we would have expected, a drop of 20%. $16.8 million of that was due to the decline in tourists’ spending and the remaining $21.0 was due to a decline in non-tourist spending.

Put another way, tourists accounted for 44 percent of the $37.8 million drop in combined March and April taxable sales, while all other sources accounted for the remaining 56 percent.

How Locals Spend Money

That only 44 percent of the drop was due to a decline in tourist-related spending may seem surprising, but for two reasons it makes a lot of sense. First, only half of March was lost, and by all accounts tourist spending was robust in the first half of March. Second, even in a normal April there is essentially no tourist business. Had the COVID coma occurred at any other time of year, the tourists-to-non-tourist ratio would have likely been more skewed toward tourists’ expenditures.

Taking a closer look at how locals spend their money, as noted above the Department of Revenue’s monthly “Minor” reports associate each one of Teton County’s businesses with one of 306 NIAICS four-digit codes. Using these to determine whether a business serves tourists, locals, or a combination yields the sort of analysis shown in Figures 3-5.

Figure 3 shows the figures reported in the May report, broken down into the four basic categories of Tourism, Tourism/Local Blend, Local, and All Other. (Note: Because this section’s analysis is more granular than the one above, the two sections’ numbers don’t quite line up. Their gist is the same, though.)

The big take-away from Figure 3 is that April 2020’s tourism-related sales were off by about half from the previous year, local-related sales were about break-even, and those in blended categories basically split the difference.

Figure 4 breaks the first three categories into their respective sub-categories. Four things jump off this graph.

First, while the two basic “pure” tourism categories of Rental Cars and Lodging took big hits in April, they did not go away altogether. In part, this is likely due to late-arriving payments for sales taxes collected in March. Late payments can’t account for everything, though, so it’s likely some of April’s lodging sales were likely due to the “essential workers” who needed places to stay. Another part may be due to the fact that many downtown motels have been converted into seasonal or even year-round residences for Jackson Hole’s workforce.

Second, because they were not exclusively dependent on tourists, the “blend” categories fared better than the core tourism categories.

Third, the pure “local” categories did better than pure or blended tourism categories.

Fourth, only two categories of business showed an uptick in sales during April: Construction and On-line Shopping. The former was up a solid 7 percent; the latter was up an astonishing 87 percent (more on that in a moment).

Figure 5 looks at different sub-categories of Figure 4’s “Core retail” category, and it gets at one other interesting phenomenon.

During April, two retail sub-categories actually showed growth from 2019. One was Sporting Goods, up 22 percent (best guess: retailers trying to liquidate merchandise). The other was Liquor, up 53 percent (best guess: whatever it takes to get you through a very difficult month).

It’s also notable that gasoline was down as little as it was, especially given how much gas prices fell during the month.

Figures 6-8 show the same data for the April and May reports combined (i.e., the reports reflecting March and April’s sales). For good or ill, over the course of these two difficult months, the one retail category which grew was liquor.

On-line Purchases

So what about on-line purchases? In March 2020, they were up 93 percent over March 2019; in April they were up 87 percent; for the two months combined, a near-doubling at 90 percent.

Which, to put it mildly, is a stunning rate of growth, especially when compared to the 21 percent decrease in all other retail sales during the combined months of March and April.

This growth rate becomes even more eye-popping when we consider that, during March and April, on-line shopping accounted for 25 percent of all of Teton County’s retail sales, accounting for $12.4 million of Teton County’s total retail expenditures of $47.9 million.

And if that weren’t enough, take away on-line sales, and Teton County’s combined total taxable sales in March and April combined would have fallen an additional fifth, from 20 percent to 24 percent.

So what’s going on?

Three things, really.

First, during the pandemic, with a lot of stores closed, people turned to on-line shopping. Not just in Jackson Hole, but across the country.

Second, because so few tourists were here in March and April, retail sales were at their annual nadir. As a result, on-line sales could account for a much higher percentage of overall totals.

There was a third, more Wyoming-specific reason, though, for what appears to be such a huge jump in on-line taxable sales. This was a change in Wyoming’s sales tax laws.

As Figure 9 illustrates, through the first quarter of 2017, on-line retailers could sell goods to Wyoming residents and businesses without charging buyers any sales tax. This, of course, put Wyoming merchants at a big disadvantage, one that started to change in April, 2017, when Amazon began charging Wyoming customers the sales tax applicable in their county.

Commerce being what it is, all this led to a big court fight, which was eventually decided in the state’s favor. When that occurred, all on-line merchants selling into Wyoming had to charge sales tax (this happened in April, 2019, as indicated by the purple arrow in Figure 9).

The law being what it is, though, it turns out the ruling didn’t cover every on-line activity. This is because the on-line sales world is broken into two general categories of merchants: sellers and facilitators. Amazon is a hybrid of the two, selling some things directly and serving as an on-line clearing house, or “facilitator”, for other vendors. Last July, those facilitators were finally subject to sales tax, meaning that as of July 2019, essentially all on-line sales into Wyoming are taxed at the rate applicable in the recipient’s home county.

As a result, since last July Teton and other Wyoming counties have seen a huge surge in sales tax collections under the 2 digit “44 – Retail Trade” category. That artificial growth stimulus will end in another month, though, allowing us to directly compare growth in local local bricks and mortar retail to its on-line counterpart.

Looking Ahead

When we are able to make such “apples-to-apples” comparisons between types of retailers, though, I’m concerned our local bricks-and-mortar retailers will not fare well. This is because even before COVID-19, things were not looking good for Jackson Hole’s traditional retailers.

Retail is the single biggest category of Jackson Hole’s taxable sales economy. Back out building materials and on-line sales from overall retail sales, though, and this remaining “core retail” sector had essentially stopped growing before the pandemic struck. In particular, starting last fall growth dropped dramatically and, put charitably, had become anemic even during the halcyon pre-COVID days. Strong sales in building materials and, especially, on-line shopping were hiding this weakness among our core bricks-and-mortar retailers, but it’s been there for a while.

The concern, of course, is that our local bricks-and-mortar retail sector was not in strong shape going into what will arguably be Jackson Hole’s most fateful summer in decades – at least since 1988, and maybe for decades before that.

None of us knows what will happen this summer, but given how dependent so many of our retailers are on summer, it suggests many anxious weeks ahead for them. Combine that with the undoubted growth in locals’ on-line shopping, and it’s a fraught time to be a Jackson Hole bricks-and-mortar retailer. As much as it pains me to write this, my fear is that, six to twelve months from now, Jackson Hole’s retail scene will be much less-vibrant than it has been over these last few years.

Hello, and happy Summer Solstice!

Welcome to the June 20, 2020 edition of the CoThrive newsletter.

This newsletter’s purpose is to explore the concept of co-thriving; i.e., the state in which a human community and the ecosystem in which it lies simultaneously thrive.

In this, CoThrive is both an extension of the column I wrote for many years in the Jackson Hole News&Guide, and a refinement: an extension because the column ended two years ago when I became a candidate for the Jackson Town Council; a refinement because I want to use the newsletter not only to explore the dynamics of the Jackson Hole region, but also what it means to co-thrive – or whether co-thriving is even possible.

The first edition of CoThrive came out in January, and my plan was to publish it either monthly or, if things broke right, semi-monthly. As the saying goes, though, life got in the way of plans, and so this is the first edition in far too long.

On the positive side, in writing this piece I ended up with so much material that I’m splitting it into two editions. Both editions focus on the human side of the co-thrive equation by using looking at how COVID-19 is affecting Jackson Hole”s economy. Below I look at visitation during the first four weeks Yellowstone National Park was open (May 18-June 15). The June 25 edition (my son’s birthday – woo woo!) will complement the visitor data by looking at taxable sales during the month of April, the first full month of COVID-19’s effects.

• Yellowstone Visitation
• Data
• Concerns
• The challenge
• One final thought

The combined big take-away? This summer, Jackson Hole’s economy may end up doing better than we feared.

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts, reactions, and comments.

Jonathan Schechter
Executive Director

Yellowstone Visitation

Because of COVID-19, both Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks opened late this summer, first letting visitors through their gates on Monday, May 18. On that date, Grand Teton opened all of its gates, while Yellowstone opened its two Wyoming gates: South (the access point from Jackson Hole) and East (Cody).

In normal times, both parks provide monthly visitor counts based on vehicle traffic. Because US 89/191 runs through the middle of Grand Teton National Park, though, that park needs to coordinate its traffic counts with those of Wyoming”s Department of Transportation. Yellowstone doesn”t have that complication, and this year the park has been kind enough to provide daily vehicle counts for each of its five gates (the three Montana gates – Northeast (Cooke City), North (Gardiner); and West (West Yellowstone) – opened on Monday, June 1).

Data

Figure 1 compares 2019 and 2020 total vehicle counts for the four weeks between May 18 and June 14. As it shows, in 2020 the number of vehicles entering Yellowstone from Jackson Hole was down 30 percent, and the park”s overall traffic count was down 37 percent.

Figure 2 breaks the overall data into four one-week periods, revealing a much different story.

During Yellowstone”s first four weeks of summer 2020, overall visitation was down at least 30 percent each week, and in the third week was down 46 percent.

The South Gate followed a similar pattern during the first three weeks, with each week”s vehicle count down around 40 percent. Things really changed in the fourth week, though, with 2020’s vehicle count only 10 percent below 2019’s.

Dig a little deeper, and for the five days between June 11-15 (the most recent five days for which I have data), 2020’s South Gate traffic was essentially the same as 2019’s. Save for the lightly-used Northeast Gate, this wasn”t true for the three other major gates, all of which were down 20%-30%.

To me, this seems significant because of recent talk that”town seems busy.” These recent South Gate vehicle counts support that impression: For at least a handful of days in mid-June, Jackson Hole”s 2020 summer visitation has been similar to 2019’s. (Figure 3)

Concerns

If visitation numbers do stay high, it will create two concerns.

The first is logistical. As in, if our visitor counts end up being surprisingly high, where will all those people sleep and eat? Roughly 2/3 of the hotel rooms in both Yellowstone and Grand Teton won”t open this season, and hotels outside of the park aren’t necessarily operating at full capacity. That”s certainly the case with restaurants, most of which have reduced their dining room capacities by half.

The point is that, compared to past summers, Jackson Hole has far less capacity to handle visitors. If visitation numbers aren’t correspondingly lower, the result will be a mess – too many people with too few places to stay and eat. Yet to the best of my knowledge, no effort has been made to figure out what our restricted visitor carrying capacity might be, much less how to align that reduced capacity with efforts promoting the region.

The second concern is health-related.

To state the obvious, thanks to COVID-19 across the country everyone is going stir-crazy. Throw in the onset of summer”s”it”s so nice outside” weather, and even the most disciplined person is itching to break away from the soul-crushing sameness of the COVID-19 lockdown.

Combine that stir-craziness with nationwide efforts to re-open the economy, and travel is picking up. Not air travel, but driving to places within easy – or in some cases not-so-easy – distance. Like Jackson Hole and, at its northern end, Yellowstone”s South Gate.

Pushing this thinking a bit further, who is going to be most likely to travel to a place like Jackson Hole? Answer: Folks less-concerned about COVID-19. Folks less-concerned about contracting it. Spreading it. Maybe even believing it exists. So when such folks get to a place like the Tetons, they”ll also be less-concerned about things like wearing masks and practicing social distancing.

Complicating matters further is that these folks are not only on vacation, but are likely on their first vacation since the COVID-19-related shutdowns. As a result, this will be their first opportunity to release all the pressure built up during months of self-isolation. And since they”ll likely hundreds of miles from home, they”ll also likely be several hundred miles away from the implicit COVID-related behavioral strictures a community imposes upon its residents (e.g., if someone you know gives you a dirty look because you”re not wearing a mask, it”s far more powerful than if that look comes from a stranger in a town you’re visiting).

Add to all this the dis-inhibiting qualities of alcohol, and it”s not hard to imagine an uptick in Jackson Hole”s tourism resulting in an uptick in Jackson Hole”s COVID-19 cases. Like, for instance, the rise we”ve seen from zero active cases on June 9 to nine on June 19.

Is that a lot? No. But the real concern is the same one that led to March”s clampdown: If the number of COVID-19 cases rises rapidly, it has the potential to overwhelm Jackson Hole’s healthcare infrastructure.

Perhaps this is unlikely. Hopefully it’s unlikely. The unfortunate reality, though, is that if you were going to design a place ripe for becoming a COVID-19 hotspot, you”d be hard-pressed to do better than Jackson Hole and our industrial tourism model.

What do I mean by”industrial tourism”? Just this. Especially in summer, Jackson Hole”s tourism industry depends on quantity, specifically on bringing thousands of people into our community every day, folks from all over the region, nation, and world. Once here, we push them into close proximity in hotels, restaurants, bars, and the like, then send them on their way a day or two later.

This industrial-scale process has worked extraordinarily well for Jackson Hole for many, many decades. In the COVID-19 era, though, such a process makes it essentially impossible to do widespread testing and contact tracing, the two keys to keeping coronavirus under control.

The challenge

Which creates an immense, incredibly thorny challenge. If we fully embrace our standard approach to summer tourism, we”ll leave ourselves and our visitors very vulnerable to a COVID-19 spike, catalyzed by tourists who are asymptomatic disease carriers. If we fully embrace health precautions, though, then our quantity-driven business model falls apart.

Which is why the most recent South Gate visitation data are so eye-catching, for they suggest we could be headed for a summer hallmarked by a worst-of-both-worlds hybrid: Large numbers of tourists plus insufficient tourism infrastructure leading to a lousy guest experience plus a second wave of coronavirus cases.

Through efforts like the Travel and Tourism Board”s Clean, Careful, Connected campaign, our community is trying very hard to strike the right balance between commerce and public health. The vexing problem, though, is that we have no clear idea how to address this unprecedented situation – there is no roadmap, no recipe, no blueprint to follow for what to do or how to do it. So we try, we wait, we gather and evaluate the best data we can find and act accordingly. And then we hope for the best.

One final thought

Everyone who loves Jackson Hole owes a huge debt of gratitude to those involved in creating the community”s response to COVID-19. Public health officials, business and non-profit leaders, government electeds and staff, and concerned citizens have all made Herculean efforts to address the manifold challenges COVID-19 has presented. As a result, the entire community can take great pride in knowing we”ve likely done everything we can possibly do.

None of which may matter.

This is because ultimately, the only thing that will matter is one thing we can”t control: whether potential tourists feel safe enough to travel.

Like a sense of humor or falling in love, feeling safe is visceral. There is no right or wrong – either you feel safe or you don”t. Whatever you feel is valid, and no matter what I say, I can”t change your mind because it”s not about your mind.

But your mind takes in information. For example, as I write this, Wyoming and every state surrounding us is experiencing a growth in confirmed COVID-19 cases. As is every state in the Mountain and Pacific time zones save New Mexico. Further, the Washington Post reports that confirmed cases are growing nationwide, and”The World Health Organization warned Friday that ‘the world is in a new and dangerous phase’ as the global pandemic accelerates.”

Will that matter to potential visitors to our region? Who knows? And the only way we’ll know is if they come. Or don”t.

What we do know is this, though. We”re living in a time of not just uncertainty, but fear. For some, it”s fear for their health. For others, it”s fear for their livelihoods. Or their businesses. Or how the pressures of the last few months are affecting their loved ones. Or themselves. Or some combination of all this and more.

All of which is difficult enough. Making things far worse has been the inexcusable killing of George Floyd and the spotlight it’s shone on racism, inequality, and so many other related issues.

We need to acknowledge and address these issues. These stresses. These fears. All are real, all are profound. And all affect us – as individuals, a community, a people – in ways we we don’t, and maybe won’t ever, fully understand.

Similarly, we have no clear understanding of how to address these manifold and interwoven issues – here again, there’s no roadmap, recipe, or blueprint. As we muddle our way along, though, in no small measure our success will depend on our ability to be empathetic – towards ourselves, our community, our world.

Or, as Mickey Hart, drummer for the Grateful Dead put it in the last words spoken at the Dead”s final show in Chicago on July 5, 2015:

“The feeling we have here –
remember it, take it home and do some good with it.
Hug your husband. Wife. Kids. I”ll leave you with this: Please, be kind.”

A Solid 2020 in Store

As we go roaring into 2020, what might the year hold for Jackson Hole’s economy?

I’ve got some ideas, but first it’s important to share a depressing reality: We don’t understand our economy very well, and certainly don’t measure it fully. Not even close.

What we know; what we don’t know

Economics may be the dismal science, but what the heck, let’s start with a joke.

A man walks out of a bar late one night. The block is dark save for one lamppost in the middle of the block. Underneath the lamppost is a guy on all fours – very clearly drunk and very clearly searching the ground for something.

After watching for a while, the guy says to the drunk: “What are you doing?”

“Looking for my keys” replies the drunk.

“Want some help?”

“Sure.”

So now two of them are looking, but after a few futile minutes the guy says to the drunk: “I don’t see your keys anywhere. Where did you drop them?”

The drunk looks up, points to the end of the block, and says “Down by the corner.”

“So why are you looking here?” asks the guy.

“Because the light’s better,” replies the drunk.

And that is the essence of why Teton County does a lousy job understanding and measuring its economy.

What we measure, and why

Wyoming is the most politically conservative of the 50 states, but in a very libertarian way: Generally speaking, Wyoming residents want as little government involvement in their lives as possible.

This libertarian streak plays out in a number of ways, most notably in how Wyoming funds state and local government – basically we rely on taxing stuff we dig out of the ground and buy at the mercantile. Property taxes are relatively light, and it’s a point of pride that the state has no income tax. Also important to this conversation is that one way we keep government out of our lives is by not measuring much of what goes on within our borders.

Critically, one thing Wyoming does measure is taxable sales. Why? Because especially for local government, sales taxes pay a lot of our bills.

Over-simplifying, Wyoming charges sales tax on those items that were important to the state’s economy when our governmental funding mechanism was established in the mid-20th century, most notably consumer goods, hotel rooms, and food and drink sold at restaurants. And because sales taxes are critically important to local government, the state requires them to be remitted monthly, then dutifully records and reports them.

Here in Teton County, no other economic metric is reported as frequently or accurately as sales taxes. Hence, because it’s the measurement we have at hand – the one streetlight on the block, if you will – we equate it with our economic health.

Which, at best, gives us a profoundly incomplete picture of our economy.

A complete assessment of Teton County’s economic activity would measure not just taxable sales, but all of the community’s other untaxed economic activities. These include non-taxable sales (e.g., professional services and recreational activities) and of course our untaxed income (wages, pensions, and investments). Add these into the mix, and in the most recent data year, taxable sales accounted for around 15 percent of Teton County’s total economic activity.(Figure 1)

Because it’s the only thing we measure on a regular basis, we equate taxable sales with our entire economy. But as with the drunk under the lamppost, in the absence of any other frequent and reliable metrics, we turn to these data even if they illuminate the wrong thing.

Sales taxes in Teton County

Despite this fundamental problem, taxable sales measurements have three things going for them.

First, as noted, they are reported every month.

Second, they seem to account for a relatively stable proportion of Jackson Hole’s overall economic activity: As Figure 2 suggests, especially since coming out of the recession, taxable sales have regularly accounted for 14-15 percent of all local economic activity. So while taxable sales data don’t give us a complete sense of what’s going on in our economy, at least they seem to give us a general sense of trends – if taxes are up X percent, the rest of the economy is likely up by a similar amount.

Third, sales taxes generate a lot of money for our state and local governments.

For every $100 of taxable sales made in Jackson Hole, the state of Wyoming gets $2.77 in general sales tax revenue, Teton County gets $1.23, and the Town of Jackson gets $1.00. Multiply that by the $1.63 billion worth of taxable goods sold in Teton County in 2019, and the state received roughly $44.9 million, the county around $20.0 million, and the town around $16.3 million.

Because the Town of Jackson doesn’t levy a property tax, sales-related tax revenues are especially important to the town, accounting for around 75 percent of its FY 2020 general operating funds. For the county, which does levy a property tax, the figure is closer to 50 percent.

Statewide, in FY 2019 Wyoming’s basic four percent sales tax generated around $768 million for the state’s general fund. Which gives us 768 million reasons why the state counts and reports sales taxes every month.

Sales taxes in Jackson Hole: A look back

The state’s current system for reporting overall taxable sales dates back to March, 1997. Because any one month’s figures can be wildly misleading, it’s far more instructive to look at 12- month running totals. As Figure 3 shows, during the two-plus decades between February 1998 and December 2019, Teton County’s total taxable sales grew from $621 million to $1.63 billion, a total growth rate of 162 percent and a Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 4.5 percent. (Adjusted for inflation, the growth figures were 65 percent and 2.3 percent respectively.)

As Figure 4 suggests, from a growth perspective the last 21 years can be divided into six periods: three of strong growth, one of moderate growth, and two of decline.

Three things jump off of Figure 4:

• During the three separate periods of strong growth, taxable sales grew at essentially the same pace – a tad over eight percent.
• The two periods of decline each lasted 21 months. The post-recession decline, though, was twice as sharp as the one around the time of the 9/11 attacks.
• The current period of strong growth has lasted 81 months, or nearly seven years.

The big question, of course, is how much longer the current growth period will continue.

Sales taxes in Jackson Hole: A look ahead

In July 2004, Wyoming began providing reports showing monthly taxable sales by industrial category. As a result, starting in June 2005 12-month running totals of these more granular figures became available. What do data tell us about the economy since then?

As Figure 5 suggests, if you create a line graph comparing Teton County’s taxable sales to the Standard & Poors 500 average (S&P 500) between June 2005 – December 2019, there’s a striking similarity to the shapes of the two lines.

The similarity becomes even more pronounced if you offset the S&P figure by 15 months, so that the S&P’s recession-related zenith and nadir align with those of local taxable sales. (Figure 6)

Happily, this visual similarity also holds up statistically, at a very high level of confidence. As a result, it can serve as the foundation of a model for estimating Teton County’s future taxable sales growth.

The model’s results

The S&P 500-based model of Teton County’s taxable sales suggests Teton County will continue to see taxable sales growth through at least the first quarter of 2021. Because of the lag between the S&P 500’s performance and local taxable sales, the model indicates this growth will occur even if the stock market slows down or begins to lose value during 2020.

How much growth? The model suggests that during calendar 2020, Teton County’s total taxable sales will grow 6.3 percent from 2019’s $1.63 billion figure, reaching a total of around $1.73 billion. (Figure 7)

Knowing this, the next question to ask is “Which sectors will experience the highest growth?”

Figure 8 shows, Teton County’s taxable sales can be broken down into six basic categories.

The county’s biggest sales tax-generating industry is Retail, which accounted for around one-third of all sales during 2019.

Second place is shared by two specific industries – Lodging and Restaurants – and the catch-all category of “All Other.” Last year, each accounted for around $300 million in sales.

Of note here is that, over the past 15 years, Restaurants has been by far the fastest growing local industry, with its sales tripling between 2005-2019. Only Retail has come anywhere close to matching that rate of growth.

Construction and Government (which is basically vehicle sales) are the two other major categories, each generating around $100 million in annual sales.

Unfortunately, the statistical correlation between the S&P 500 and most of these categories is not nearly as strong as with overall sales. The one exception is Retail, which the model predicts will enjoy 9.5 percent growth during 2020. The model also suggests Lodging, Government, and All Other will grow at around the same pace as the overall economy. That noted, because the statistical correlation is weaker, these estimates should be taken with a goodly-sized grain of salt.

In short, barring some sort of profound disruption, Teton County’s taxable sales in 2020 should grow at a steady, if not spectacular, pace – below the nearly-seven year average of 8.1 percent, but still a vigorous six-to-seven percent.

If there is a dark cloud out there, it’s hovering over the Construction sector. As Figure 9 illustrates, since May 2019 Construction-related sales have been declining.

The recession hit the local Construction industry hard, with taxable sales falling in half during its nearly-three year slump. Since starting to rebound in late 2011, though, local Construction-related sales steadily climbed, to a place where, in January 2019, they finally returned to their pre-recession highs.

Not for long, though. Starting last May, every month in 2019 had lower Construction-related taxable sales than in the previous year. The truly odd thing is that no one can explain why, for from their respective perches, people in all facets of the building trades suggest their business continues to be strong. The sales tax data show a softening though, suggesting that, at least when it comes to Jackson Hole’s construction industry, the whole may not be as strong as the sum of its parts.

A note of caution in what looks to be an otherwise solid 2020.