Emerging Trends
As the economy recovers from the pandemic recession, several new trends are emerging across the state. Our regional analysts have put together a new set of blogs for February focusing on various demographic and economic trends, including domestic out-migration in the Twin Cities, wage growth in Central and Northwest, and industry employment shifts in Northeast, Southeast, and Southwest. For more information, please reach out to your local Regional Analyst!
According to the most recent estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, the 7-county Twin Cities Metro Area's population declined by about 9,000 people over the past year. This was quite a reversal, after the metro added an average of more than 31,000 net new residents each year from 2010 to 2020. What were the components of this population change?
Median hourly wages in Central Minnesota grew by 14.7% from 2019 to 2021, a respectable amount with even more wage growth likely in 2022. Yet changes in the early stages of the rapid inflation increase sheds light on what types of workers were able to command higher wages and in what industries.
As of the third quarter of 2022, Northeast was home to 138,486 jobs across 9,236 establishments. Compared to pre-pandemic levels, there were 6,508 fewer jobs, a 4.5% decline over 3 years. Compared to other planning regions, this was the largest percent decline by a considerable margin, and the third-largest numeric decline, despite the region having the smallest number of jobs.
As the economy recovers from the pandemic recession, the two biggest economic topics are the tight labor market and inflation. While the tight labor market pulls wages up, inflation pulls down the purchasing power of those increased wages. Which is winning out in Northwest Minnesota, wage growth or inflation?
Many events have impacted Minnesota's labor market throughout the past 20 years, including the Great Recession in 2008 and the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Even with these significant disruptions, Southeast Minnesota's economy continues to demonstrate resiliency.
Newly released data show that the economic recovery is continuing in Southwest Minnesota, with the 23-county region adding almost 3,000 net new jobs over the past year. According to third quarter 2022 QCEW data, Southwest gained 2,994 additional jobs compared to the third quarter of 2021, a 1.8% increase. While the region is still behind its pre-pandemic employment level, it is now back to 97.3% of the 2019 job count.
Please reach out to your regional analyst if you or your staff would be interested in having a customized LMI training session. We would be happy to accommodate your training requests, either on LMI Data Tools or local economic conditions!
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