I felt like this chart shows that retail store closures are a lagging indicator for employment. Stores are up in NY, WA, TX -- all states where people migrate to to work in tech companies. (Not sure about ND and UT, though.)
The charts are over a decade, wouldn’t be surprising if North Dakota could be explained by the oil boom that happened there. No idea about Utah...
Utah has experienced a tech boom as well. They have multiple unicorns. Qualtrics, Domo, pluralsight, as well as a large presence from Adobe, Microsoft, and eBay among others.