A story published today by the Deseret News reports that the census figures released Tuesday shows that the state of Utah tops the national average both for the percentage of residents who have never been married and the percentage of women in the work force.

Of Utah residents 15 years and older, 27.9 percent reported in 2000 they had never been married, compared to 27.1 percent nationally. And Utah's never-been-married population is growing. In 1990, it was 2.4 percent lower than its rate in 2000 — 25.5 percent.

E. Jeffrey Hill, associate professor of marriage, family and human development at Brigham Young University, suspects the increase may be because more Utahns are waiting to get married.

While the number of Utahns who have never married may be surprising to some, the myth of a mostly male workplace has been dying for years.

Ashdown, deputy director of the Governor's Office of Planning and Budget. "We have larger families, and it takes more people to support families."

Ashdown says another reason women in Utah are working more than women in the rest of the nation is because Utah's labor participation rate in general is fairly high compared to the nation. Of those Utah residents 16 and older, 69 percent are in the labor force, compared to 63.9 percent nationally.

Utah has a wide range of extremes when it comes to marriage.

In Halchita, San Juan County, 14.8 percent of residents are separated. There were 53 cities or towns in Utah where no residents reported being separated.

In a tiny place in Cache County that the Census Bureau calls Cache — it has 37 residents but is neither a city nor a town — 100 percent of those 15 and older are married. In Provo, the third-largest city in the state and home to two large colleges, 47.2 percent of the population has never been married.

The Utah community with the highest percentage of residents who have never been married — 66.7 percent — is Halls Crossing, a small community on the eastern shores of Lake Powell.