DEED in the News
DEED Commissioner Steve Grove drove through the latest snowstorm Friday to visit a quintessential entrepreneurial business — Guardian Athletics. Founded by Jeff Chambers, Guardian Athletics manufactures the "Kato Collar," which uses air padding to reduce the risk of concussions and other football injuries. The business benefited from the Angel Tax Credit, a program administered by DEED.
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Minnesota is facing a worker shortage. If current economic and demographic trends hold, the state will have 240,000 unfilled jobs in 2022, more than twice what it has today. “In some ways, our workforce is hiding in plain sight,” Steve Grove, the new head of DEED, said at a workshop last week. At the event, sponsored by the high-tech association, Grove spoke about training programs that engage more minorities, who are still hired at lower rates than non-Latino whites. “It’s a moral issue as well as an economic opportunity,” Grove added.
Minnesota’s new economic point person is bringing a tech executive’s love for innovation to the role. Northfield native Steve Grove, commissioner of the Department of Employment and Economic Development, has spent the past 12 years as a senior leader at YouTube and Google, most recently leading a team focused on innovations in journalism.
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Recent Press Release
DEED approved grants totaling more than $1.7 million in funding for five Minnesota businesses. The Minnesota Job Creation Fund awarded funding to Cantel Medical Corp., NAPCO International LLC, QA1 Precision Products, Inc., Up North Plastics Inc., and Vision Ease, LP. The projects are expected to create a total of 549 new jobs.
Recent Blog Posts
For many Minnesota families, child care is a necessity, yet a growing number of Minnesotans can’t access it – it just doesn’t exist. The number of licensed family childcare providers has decreased almost 30 percent in Minnesota since 2005, according to the Minnesota Department of Human Services. As part of his Budget for One Minnesota, Governor Tim Walz is proposing ways to address this issue. Learn more about it on the DEED developments blog.
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