People Power
This month's blogs highlight monthly celebrations including Explore Construction Employment Month in the Twin Cities metro area, and Women's History Month in Northeast and Southwest Minnesota. We also explore Central Minnesota’s economic resilience through various recessions, the importance of inclusive labor force participation in Northwest Minnesota, and private sector growth differences by business size and workforce characteristics in Southeast Minnesota. For more local information on any of these topics, please reach out to your Regional Analyst!
March is Explore Construction Employment Month, where throughout the month career seekers can explore resources related to employment in Construction through CareerForce. Among these resources include information on upcoming job fairs and hiring events, career exploration opportunities and other training events. While these resources, fairs, events and training opportunities are highlighted during the month of March, they continue to be available throughout the calendar year.
Employment data shows that Central Minnesota has demonstrated economic resilience amid recessions, benefiting from geographic advantages while also facing industry-specific challenges. Unlike some other regions, Central Minnesota experienced job growth during certain downturns, even as key industries like Manufacturing and Retail Trade saw significant job losses.
In celebration of Women's History Month, this blog includes some trends and characteristics of women in Northeast Minnesota's workforce. As of 2024, women accounted for nearly 71,900 jobs, or 51% of all jobs in the region. Interestingly, women in Northeast Minnesota have held more jobs than men since 2015 and for 23 of the last 24 years (see Figure 1). The peak of the female employment share in the region came in 2010, the culmination of a trend of increased labor force participation of women that had been building nationally since the 1940s. Since 2010, female labor force participation plateaued and even began to decline slightly.
My July 2023 blog demonstrated how workforce diversity boosted Northwest Minnesota's labor force in the pandemic recovery. But what is the economic impact of increased labor force participation among diverse populations? This question gets right to DEED's mission: "To empower the growth of the Minnesota economy, for everyone." Here I want to emphasize "everyone." The old cliché, "we all do better when we all do better" is not only catchy, but it is also proven true in economics.
Over the past two decades, Southeast Minnesota's employment has experienced significant changes, with varying growth patterns between small, medium and large businesses. While the region's private sector employment has grown faster than the state's overall, this growth has not been evenly distributed across businesses of different sizes. Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI), this article explores how small and large establishments have developed over time and examines three key factors of wages, turnover and workforce demographics that help explain these differences and their implications for the region's economy.
In celebration of Women's History Month, this blog includes some trends and characteristics of women in Southwest Minnesota's workforce. On an annual average in 2023, women held more than 92,000 jobs in Southwest Minnesota, accounting for just over half of all the jobs in the region. Data from the Quarterly Workforce Indicators program shows that the share of female employment has been increasing in recent years, and their contributions to economic success and growth in the region are invaluable.
LMI TRAINING SESSIONS
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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