MinnEcon Category Archive: Jobs & unemployment

Unemployment rate falls to lowest level in three years

Posted at 7:36 AM on January 6, 2012 by MPR News Staff (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

By CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER, AP Economics Writer

Job seekers visit a November career fair in Bloomington. (AP Photo/Jim Mone)

WASHINGTON (AP) - A burst of hiring in December pushed the unemployment rate to its lowest level in nearly three years, giving the economy a boost at the end of 2011.

The Labor Department said Friday that employers added a net 200,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate fell to 8.5 percent, the lowest since February 2009. The rate has dropped for four straight months.

The hiring gains cap a six-month stretch in which the economy generated 100,000 jobs or more in each month. That hasn't happened since April 2006.

The steady drop is a positive sign for President Barack Obama, who is bound to face voters with the highest unemployment rate of any sitting president since World War II. Unemployment was 7.8 percent when Obama took office in January 2009.

Still, the level may matter less to his re-election chances if the rate continues to fall. History suggests that presidents' re-election prospects hinge less on the unemployment rate itself than on the rate's direction during the year or two before Election Day.

For all of 2011, the economy added 1.6 million jobs, better than the 940,000 added in 2010. The unemployment rate averaged 8.9 percent last year, down from 9.6 percent the previous year.

Economists forecast that the job gains will top 2.1 million this year.

The December report painted a picture of a broadly improving job market. Average hourly pay rose, providing consumers with more income to spend. The average work week lengthened, a sign that business is picking up and companies may soon need more workers. And hiring was strong across almost all major industries.

Manufacturing added 23,000 jobs. Transportation and warehousing added 50,000 jobs. Retailers added 28,000 jobs. Even the beleaguered construction industry added 17,000 workers.

A more robust hiring market coincides with other positive data that show the economy ended the year with some momentum.

Weekly applications for unemployment benefits have fallen to levels last seen more than three years ago. Holiday sales were solid. And November and December were the strongest months of 2011 for U.S. auto sales.

Many businesses say they are ready to step up hiring in early 2012 after seeing stronger consumer confidence and greater demand for their products.

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Economists see signs of improving US jobs picture

Posted at 7:02 AM on January 6, 2012 by MPR News Staff (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Recent statistics are producing optimism among economists about today's government report on December employment.

Weekly reports show declining layoffs and manufacturers also have reported that they've been hiring more.

John Ryding at RDQ Economics forecasts that employers added 180,000 jobs last month, a big jump from November's 120,000 net jobs. For the coming year, Economists surveyed by the Associated Press project that the economy will generate an average of 175,000 jobs per month, up from 130,000 last year.

A FactSet survey finds economists predicting that employers added a net 150,000 jobs last month, and that the unemployment rate ticked up to 8.7 percent from 8.6 percent in November, which was the lowest rate since March 2009.

Many economists forecast that growth could slow to roughly 2 percent this year.

(Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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Demand for 'green' jobs is small, but steady in Minnesota

Posted at 4:31 PM on January 5, 2012 by Minnesota Public Radio (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

By Annie Baxter, MInnesota Public Radio

St. Paul, MInn - A new state analysis shows modest but steady demand for "green" jobs in the Minnesota's economy.

DEED surveyed thousands of employers between late 2009 and mid 2011 to see how many were hiring in areas like renewable energy production and recycling. The agency says about 2.5 percent of overall hiring demand in that period was concentrated in those green jobs.

That isn't a big share of overall job demand, said Oriane Casale, assistant director of the state's labor market information office.

"Two-point-five percent wasn't a huge number and doesn't entirely justify the attention that green is getting or has gotten recently," Casale said. "But on the other hand, IT represents, maybe 2 percent of the economy, and they certainly get a lot of attention."

Casale said green jobs tend to require high levels of education and therefore offered better wages and greater job stability than overall job openings during the survey period.

Skeptics of green job counts say the categories are too broad and include areas like ethanol production, which has environmentally harmful byproducts.

Casale says DEED tried to be very rigorous, both in defining green jobs and in following up to be sure vacancies met those criteria. She says DEED did sometimes reject employers' attempts to classify job postings as green.

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Fewer people sought unemployment aid last week

Posted at 7:50 AM on January 5, 2012 by MPR News Staff (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

By CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER, AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The number of people seeking unemployment benefits fell further in the final week of 2011, a positive sign for hiring one day ahead of Friday's December employment report.

The Labor Department says weekly applications dropped 15,000 to a seasonally adjusted 372,000 last week. It was the fourth drop in five weeks. The four-week average, which smooths fluctuations, declined to 373,250, the lowest level since June 2008.

When applications drop below 375,000 _ consistently _ they generally signal that hiring is strong enough to reduce the unemployment rate.

Applications have declined steadily over the past three months. The four-week average fell 11 percent in 2011, evidence that companies are laying off fewer workers. But many employers have been slow to add jobs.

(Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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Demand for workers rebounds in December

Posted at 11:39 AM on January 4, 2012 by Bill Catlin (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

The Conference Board Help Wanted OnLine index shows demand for workers in Minnesota rebounded last month, after a slump in November.

Minnesota employers added 5,100 online help wanted ads in December after a decline of 6,000 in November.

The Conference Board tallied 98,100 Minnesota job ads last month. That's up 21 percent from the 80,800 postings identified in December of 2010.

Minnesota has one of the lowest ratios of worker supply and demand among the states. There are 1.89 jobless workers for each online job posting in Minnesota. (The figures are calculated for November, 2011, the most recent month for which unemployment data exist.)

Five other states had lower supply/demand ratios, including North Dakota, where vacancies exceed the number of available workers--a labor shortage fueled by the oil boom.

North Dakota 0.88
Nebraska 1.27
South Dakota 1.40
Vermont 1.60
Alaska 1.83

Among major metropolitan areas, the Twin Cities supply/demand rate was second only to that of the nation's capitol (as reported for October, 2011).

Washington, DC 1.24
Minneapolis-St. Paul 1.36

Despite Minnesota's continued strength relative to other states and the nation as a whole, the Conference Board says the trend is of declining demand for workers since June of last year. Nationally the trend is declining as well, but for the nation as a whole, the arrow started pointing downward in March, three months before the trend showed up in Minnesota.

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Lower unemployment and fewer jobs? Say what?

Posted at 10:49 AM on December 15, 2011 by Bill Catlin (1 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

Minnesota's jobless rate fell by half a percentage point to 5.9 percent in November even as employers cut nearly 14,000 jobs in the state. That's the third month in a row Minnesota has seen both declining unemployment and shrinking payrolls.

The state has lost 22,900 payroll jobs over the past three months, even while the unemployment rate dropped from 7.2 percent to 5.9 percent.

State officials say the mixed results make it difficult to draw clear conclusions about the state of the labor market. They say several factors could explain the conflicting results, including sampling errors, more people becoming self-employed, changes in methodology, and more people giving up on finding work.

In November the education and health services led all sectors with a gain of 1,300 jobs.

Job losses hit many sectors:

• leisure and hospitality - 4,400
• government - 4,000
• construction - 1,600
• manufacturing - 1,200
• professional and business services - 1,100
• financial activities - 800
• trade, transportation and utilities - 700
• information - 600
• other services - 600

A peek under the hood of the falling unemployment rate shows some interesting trends. The jobless rate is based on a large survey of households. Over the past four months the survey indicates 30,000 additional people had been paid for work in Minnesota. Being paid for work may or may not involve a job with an employer. Getting a $15 spiff to shovel someone's driveway will qualify someone as "employed" in the household survey. But, as state officials note, a growing number of people who are self-employed could explain the trend.

Obviously more people being paid for work is favorable factor pushing down unemployment. Another factor is more pessimistic. An additional 13,000 people have given up on finding work in the past two months. People who aren't looking for work aren't counted as unemployed. They've dropped out of the workforce.

All that said, it's important to bear in mind that state officials are raising serious questions about the findings. Two of the four possible explanations for the conflicting unemployment and payroll employment findings relate to the way the numbers are derived--sampling error and changes in methodology--not changes in the job market. In other words, it's unclear whether we're seeing changes in the economy or just artifacts produced by number crunching.

In any case, as Annie Baxter reports today this unemployment report means potentially thousands of Minnesotans could become ineligible for extended unemployment benefits. The three month average jobless rate has fallen to 6.43 percent, below the threshold for the extended benefits to continue.

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ManpowerGroup: hiring in Minnesota may pick up slightly in early 2012

Posted at 12:29 PM on December 13, 2011 by Annie Baxter (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment, Twin Cities metro

ManpowerGroup is expecting employers in the Twin Cities and around Minnesota to pick up their hiring a bit in the first three months of 2012, according to survey results released today.

The national staffing firm's report focuses on a metric called the "net employment outlook," which is the percentage of employers surveyed who plan to hire minus the percentage planning to cut jobs. Manpower puts the "net employment outlook" for the first quarter of next year at +7 percent both for the Twin Cities area and for Minnesota as a whole. Last year's projections ranged from +4 to +5 percent.

Manpower's survey reflects a slight bump in companies' intentions to hire compared to their intentions at this time last year. But it also projects a whole lot more of the same tepid growth. Seventy one percent of Minnesota employers polled intend to maintain their current staffing levels in Q1 2012.

Statewide, the company says job prospects appear best in sectors including manufacturing of durable goods, wholesale/retail trade, transportation & utilities, information, professional & business services, education & health services, leisure & hospitality and government.

The firm says employers in non-durable manufacturing, which includes food companies, plan to reduce staffing levels.

Manpower's Minnesota survey typically involves about 400 respondents statewide and about 220 in the metro area.

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Does higher unemployment boost the death rate?

Posted at 3:17 PM on December 8, 2011 by Bill Catlin (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

We got this e-mail question yesterday:

"Has anyone looked at the comparison of the job rate to the death rate? Has joblessness and loss of healthcare raised the rate of death in Minnesota and in the country?"

Well I did a little checking and the short answer appears to be, "No."

As you can see from this first chart, from '07 to '08, both the U.S. death rate and the unemployment rate did rise. But the next year the two measures diverge. The unemployment rate soared to 9.3 percent in 2009 while the death rate moderated.

[The death rate is measured as total deaths per 100,000 population. The 2009 data was the most recent available from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The unemployment rate is the 12-month average for the non-seasonally adjusted U.S. jobless rate.]

Also, this second chart from the U.S. CDC shows both the crude and age-adjusted death rates falling visibly in the mid 70's, roughly coincident with the 1973-75 recession.

Even if the numbers did appear to show a correlation between higher unemployment and a rising death rate, it probably wouldn't be prudent to assume that there's a cause-and-effect relationship between the two. As the old statistical saw goes, "Correlation does not imply causation."

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The state of Minnesota's economy

Posted at 2:00 PM on December 1, 2011 by Bill Catlin (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

The twice-a-year budget forecast is based on an in-depth review of Minnesota's job market and overall economy. The analysis is probably the most exhaustive assessment of the state's economy available anywhere. (And as thorough economic analyses go, the forecast is eminently readable.)

The forecast's economic assessment is often overshadowed by "the number;" that is, the projected budget surplus or deficit and the political battles that will ensue as a result.

Here, then, are some of the latest forecast's observations about Minnesota's economy.

JOBS

The latest news on Minnesota's labor market is encouraging.

In 2011, Minnesota's employment growth turned positive, the average length of the workweek continues to climb back toward pre-recession levels, and hourly compensation is unusually strong.

Minnesota's labor market is in recovery, but will be unable to appreciably improve on the current pace of job creation during the first part of 2012.

Until there are clearer signs of a self-sustaining expansion, employers will remain cautious about further hiring decisions and Minnesota's economy will remain under stress with low confidence, slow wage growth, high debt burdens, depleted wealth, and discontent in the political process.

The November forecast estimates that it will take until early-2014 before Minnesota employment exceeds its pre-recession peak.

UNEMPLOYMENT

The recent drop in Minnesota's unemployment rate has resulted from household employment gains outpacing labor force growth, not from people growing discouraged and dropping out of the workforce.

Needless to say, with initial claims for unemployment insurance recently falling to levels statistically linked with better job growth, this is an indicator MMB economists will be watching very closely over the next three to six months.

HOUSING

Residential home construction continues to remain a drag on Minnesota's outlook.

If household formation rates continue to worsen in 2011 and 2012 as a result of weaker labor market conditions and the housing downturn continues to deepen later into 2013 it is unlikely that Minnesota's economy will perform as forecast.

LOTS OF RISKS

... such as further deterioration in the financial markets, failure to extend the 2 percent payroll tax holiday, weaker business investment, weaker home sales, a rapid change in price levels, or if confidence remains depressed and consumer spending proceeds more slowly ....

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Variations on the theme of Occupy

Posted at 12:15 PM on November 18, 2011 by Bill Catlin (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment, Twin Cities metro

We here in the newsroom have been wondering why the OccupyMN presence hasn't been as intense and confrontational as those in areas like New York City and Oakland, in particular.

Certainly differences in police actions may be part of the explanation. The scene in Minneapolis has not included the confrontations with police and mass arrests that have happened elsewhere.

But the regional economies may offer some additional context, if not explanation.
The Twin Cities has had much lower unemployment than Oakland and New York. That may mean a smaller portion of the population has the time and built-up frustration about the economy that can fuel protests.

And according to this analysis by a Brookings Institution scholar, the Twin Cities has a meaningful share of top household incomes, but we have a smaller portion than either the San Francisco or New York areas. Top earners are likely more visible in those areas. The study has this to say about the birthplace of the Occupy movement:

"Unsurprisingly, the New York metropolitan area has the largest number of very high-income households. Nearly 12 percent of top-income households live in the New York region, [which has] about 7 percent of all households."

Click on the map below for a larger version.

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The "smoother," the bumpier when it comes to job numbers

Posted at 3:31 PM on November 17, 2011 by Annie Baxter (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

As we've noted in an earlier post, the unemployment rate in Minnesota dropped last month to 6.4 percent (down from 6.9 percent in September). Meanwhile, payroll employment fell by 6,100 jobs.

How can there be fewer jobs AND lower unemployment? If you're like me, those contradictory pieces information may scramble your brain.

Here's what's up. There's a lot of reasons why the numbers can seem contradictory, but in this case there's funky stuff going in the way the BLS (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics) "smoothes" the numbers. That's true both of the unemployment rate and of the payroll employment number, which, you may recall, come from two totally different surveys.

The unemployment rate got pulled down in part because the effects of the state government shutdown in July were still swirling around in the numbers. Some of those workers' return to work didn't show up until the October report, partly because of how the BLS "smoothing" process captures changes in the job market. Weird, right?

On the payroll employment side of things, there's another "smoothing" process that goes on. And state labor market analyst Steve Hine is quick to point out that those numbers, which he's no longer in charge of crunching, frequently have to be revised by BLS. Case in point: the 7,400 job losses initially reported in September got revised down to 1,900.

Sounds like Hine's not a fan of the smoothing techniques.

It may be frustrating that these numbers can seem so imprecise and fraught with problems. But that's why it's important to look at long-term trends, not just a month's worth of numbers.

So it's worth noting that the unemployment rate and payroll employment have both been improving, albeit sluggishly.

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Jobs, unemployment both fall

Posted at 10:20 AM on November 17, 2011 by Bill Catlin (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

The state's employers cut 6,100 payroll jobs last month, according to the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.

Still, the long-suffering construction industry added 1,700 jobs. That was the fourth monthly gain in the past half-year.

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate fell half a percentage point to 6.4 percent last month. The rate fell in part because more people (5,457) quit looking for work. But more people (8,111) also reported they'd been paid for work during the month. Both have the effect of pushing down the jobless rate.

The U.S unemployment rate in October was 9 percent.

There was some mildly encouraging news regarding the state's payroll employment in September.

As more employers reported their headcounts for the month, the jobs picture improved. The original net loss of 7,400 jobs was revised to a decline of just 1,900.

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Help wanted, bring sheepskin

Posted at 11:17 AM on November 16, 2011 by Bill Catlin (0 Comments)
Filed under: Education, Jobs & unemployment

A segment in today's Marketplace Morning Report cited a report that estimates Minnesota ranks fifth among the states and Washington, D.C. in future job openings that will require post-secondary education.

The numbers are fairly stark: "Between 2008 and 2018, new jobs in Minnesota requiring postsecondary education and training will grow by 152,000 while jobs for high school graduates and dropouts will grow by 28,000."

The Minnesota profile is here.

The full report is here.

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Will state budget deal force up rents?

Posted at 3:02 PM on October 10, 2011 by Paul Tosto (2 Comments)
Filed under: Housing & mortgages, Jobs & unemployment

If you rent an apartment somewhere in Minnesota, odds are you didn't pay much attention to the debate in the Legislature over the Market Value Homestead Tax Credit for houses. You should have. It may be about to push your rent up 10 percent or more.

Looking to break the budget impasse that had shut down Minnesota state government for weeks, lawmakers in July agreed to end that credit, which essentially used state money to pay a portion of local homeowner property taxes to cities and towns.

To close the state budget hole, lawmakers ended the credit. In the past couple weeks, the potential effects that decision have come to light as city and county officials prepare next year's tax plan.

My MPR News colleague Dave Peters has been following the issue closely. On Friday, he wrote the burden of the tax changes in St. Paul could fall heavily on commercial property owners and apartment owners. Talking to Chris Samuel in Ramsey County's property tax division, Peters wrote:

The hardest hit? Small commercial properties, like ma and pa stores with a residence on the second floor, and larger apartment buildings, which are actually seeing their values increase, Samuel said. They could be seeing tax increases in the 16 or 17 percent range, he said.

The problem is that without the credit, local officials must spread the tax burden onto business and other properties to make up the lost state money, or else chop their budgets.

"The new system will shift taxes among properties within each community, especially to commercial, industrial, apartment, and other properties that will not receive the benefit of the homestead market value exclusion," says the League of Minnesota Cities.

The question then becomes how do apartment owners react if that happens? It's a decent guess that much of that will get passed on to renters.

The residential rental market is incredibly tight and vacancies have plummeted the past few years.

Here's a Minnesota Housing Partnership chart on the Twin Cities.

MHP recently wrote that rental vacancies fell to 2.4 percent, a 10-year low, noting a five percent rate is typically considered "balanced."

One other thing: Lawmakers also balanced the budget by cutting the state's renter's credit, intended to help low and moderate income renters. The non-profit Minnesota Budget Project writes:

The Renters' Credit will be cut by $26 million in FY 2013, or 13 percent, starting with refunds filed in 2012. An estimated 297,000 Minnesota households will lose an average of $87 because of this cut. About 7,300 Minnesota households will lose their entire credit.

Even without the legislative changes, renters were likely facing an increase because of the tight supply. Now, a budget deal focused on homeowners and property taxes may end up pushing up costs for apartments by double digits.

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Generations of 'lost' Minnesota workers?

Posted at 3:35 PM on October 5, 2011 by Paul Tosto (1 Comments)
Filed under: Education, Jobs & unemployment

The fastest growing student populations in Minnesota's schools -- the people who you will increasingly depend upon in your old age to pay taxes, keep your Social Security solvent, build Minnesota's economy and its quality of life -- are the least prepared to take on that future.

It's a point I've made repeatedly during the recession and "recovery," starting in July of 2009 when a federal report showed Minnesota with some of the widest racial achievement gaps in the nation.

Two-plus years later, not much has changed. Data on Minneapolis student achievement released in a report today from the Minneapolis Foundation and Wilder Foundation reinforces what we've known for a long time.

You can find the full report here.

I covered schools in the Twin Cities for more than a decade before coming to MPR News. I'm not being cynical when I say there isn't much new in the data. Here's a blurb from Minnesota's fourth grade reading report on the National Assessment of Educational Progress:

In 2009, Black students had an average score that was 35 points lower than that of White students. This performance gap was not significantly different from that in 1992 (34 points).

So we're talking about 20 years of gap in that measure alone.

Looking through today's report, I pulled out three telling graphs.

The first tells you the scope of the problem in the earliest grades.

The second gives you a sense of how intractable the problems are. Third grade reading performance is a pretty decent predictor of who graduates.

Remarkably, there is no gap when it comes to the issue of how satisfied people are in the Minneapolis schools.

I'm not sure what to make of that.

Since I write about the economy, now, though, I can tell you we should all be worried about what it means for the state's economic future.

Earlier this year, state demographer Tom Gillaspy and his colleagues wrote of a disturbing and growing mismatch between the skills of those looking for work and the skills employers seek to hire" and a "lost generation" of Minnesota workers, "where those with the necessary skills do very well while those without the desired skills will struggle economically for the remainder of their lives."

The Minneapolis Foundation / Wilder Foundation report data make it clear that Gillaspy's "lost generation" metaphor could extend way beyond the recession.

It's a future where Minnesota doesn't have the talent to fill the jobs the state needs the most but must still contend with a surplus of workers whose skills no longer match up with the economy's needs.

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A decade of winners, losers in Minnesota manufacturing

Posted at 11:05 AM on October 5, 2011 by Paul Tosto (1 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

Minnesota's lost about 20 percent of its manufacturing employment the last decade, roughly 80, 000 jobs.

Dig deeper, though, and there's a more complex story to tell.

Some manufacturing sectors are growing, thanks to the region's medical device industry. On the flip side, whatever computer manufacturing business the state had at the start of the 2000s is largely gone now.

We got a look recently at the decade's winners and losers in manufacturing thanks to research from Economic Modeling Specialists Inc., an Idaho-based consulting group that likes data as much as we do.

When EMSI posted recently on the "50 Manufacturing Sectors That GREW Over The Past 10 Years," we asked them if they'd crunch similar data for us for Minnesota. They did.

There are hundreds of manufacturing categories. You can find the full Minnesota data set here.

Here are the 20 biggest categories of winners...

... and losers

The federally collected data are broken down using the North American Industry Classification System. EMSI's Josh Wright notes that the 2011 job numbers "are better described as estimates right now because of the time lag with certain federal/state sources."

You can certainly see the growing importance of the region's medical device companies and ethanol plants over the decade along with the drop in jobs tied to the home building industry.

Take a look at post something below or drop us a line directly if something drops out at you.

Despite the hit, manufacturing still drives about 11 percent of the state's employment.

Source: Joint Economic Committee

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Businesses feeling better but most still won't add jobs

Posted at 2:59 PM on September 28, 2011 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

It can be a frustrating exercise these days searching for positive signs in the economy. Newly released survey data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis show some good stuff but, really, nothing to convince you a hiring spree is around the corner.

Results from an ad hoc survey of 330 business contacts from around the Upper Midwest (85 percent from Minnesota) in late August show businesses generally upbeat about the near term economy with 85 percent expecting sales revenue to stay the same or increase in the next three months and nearly as many expecting profits to rise or stay about the same.

The Fed got good feedback, too, on credit conditions. Despite ongoing national worries about access to credit, only 8 percent of those surveyed said conditions had deteriorated in the past three months.

And yet, only 21 percent say they expect to add jobs this fall while 10 percent anticipate cuts.

Overall, the survey suggests that while businesses are feeling better about revenues, profits and credit access, they're still holding back on hiring.

A couple of other charts tell the story of where we are in Minnesota.

Here's total non-farm employment, seasonally adjusted, the past 10 years.

The cliff dive here hasn't been as bad as it's been nationally. Minnesota's jobless rate stands at 7.2 percent compared to 9.1 percent in the U.S. But, like the nation, we can't dig ourselves out.

The last chart from the Minneapolis Fed compares employment changes in Minnesota in the current Great Recession compared to 1981, the last Great Recession.

The bounce back in jobs following the 1981 recession was strong and what we've come to expect following downturns. The business cycle turns, things improve, companies start hiring again.

This time it's different. The bounce back is flat. The Fed's newest survey data offer little hope that a jobs upswing is on the way.

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Enough younger workers?

Posted at 10:40 AM on May 6, 2011 by Paul Tosto (1 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

We've written a few posts this week about the plight of older workers during the Great Recession.

It's been a tough few years, including a doubling of the number of unemployed age 55 and older.

But here's the larger reason we should be paying a lot more interest: We're going to see a lot more of them (us?).

Minnesota's on the path now to an aging, slow-growth workforce. The table below shows what's happened since 2000. Workers 55 and older have grown from about 12 percent of the workforce to nearly 19 percent.

Those trends are going to continue. The state is on the cusp of a huge jump in its 65-and-older population.

We're likely to see more older Minnesotans working longer. That's not a bad thing.

The bigger worry, though, is how many younger workers will be there in the future?

Put another way, will there be enough younger workers in the future to build the state's economy, maintain our quality of life and pay for the needs of a swelling retiree population?

It's not a crisis now but shouldn't we be talking about it?
__________________________

Thanks to DEED's Rachel Vilsack, who sent us the updated data on the age range of workers in Minnesota. She wrote a detailed piece on older workers back in April 2009.

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We're number what?

Posted at 2:57 PM on May 4, 2011 by Paul Tosto (1 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

We love stats here at MinnEcon and we spend hours rearranging data on spreadsheets looking for trends.

Yes, we're geeks. But we're not chumps.

So when it comes to trying to rank the best or worst of anything, we run the other way. We know enough about the use and misuse of data to know that rankings can range from arbitrary to meaningless.

And so it is with discussions about the best jobs climate.

In past posts, we've taken the air out of the Wisconsin-is-better line and that not every Minnesota business is moving to South Dakota.

Today we ran across Forbes.com and its newest "Best Cities for Jobs" page. The Twin Cities was not there.

We found that odd because it was only two months ago that Forbes put Minneapolis on top of its rankings of the "Best Cities for Finding Employment."

Yes, the one in March used a different source than the one this week. But you get the point.

Back in January, ABC News declared Minneapolis among the top five cities that were hiring, writing:

Minneapolis has already recovered more than half of the jobs it lost in the recession. Two driving forces are manufacturing and retail. Manufacturing is regaining steam because demand for products is staying ahead of production, which means new orders are growing. Company owners are feeling confident and are hiring to meet that demand. Plus, the number of retail jobs is growing, helped in no small part by the massive expansion of the Mall of America, which is currently underway.

Let's pick that apart, starting with the assertion that "Minneapolis has already recovered more than half the jobs it lost in the recession."

Here's a chart from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics showing non-farm employment in the Twin Cities metro (click on the chart for a larger view).

You'd be hard pressed to argue the economy's made back half the jobs lost since December 2007 when the Great Recession began.

As for manufacturing, executives are more optimistic about the economy but the jobs have been slow to follow

A chart from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis bears that out.

As for "demand for products is staying ahead of production, which means new orders are growing..." this may or may not be true. Even when new orders are falling, demand for products can stay ahead of production if output shrinks.

Retail picking up? Yeah, but here's a look at the metro area retail job vacancies reported by the state Department of Employment and Economic Development.

Yes, it looks like demand is up but it's pretty minimal compared to the wealth of job openings in the two years before the recession.

The point? Economic rankings should be viewed as entertainment. No one should be making serious decisions -- policy or otherwise -- based on them.

We'll leave it to you to rank the weakest statements in the ABC story.
___________________________

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Where do age 55+ Minnesotans work?

Posted at 1:02 PM on May 3, 2011 by Paul Tosto (2 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

Where will you find the find largest concentration of Minnesota workers 55 and older?

Mining.

That wasn't your first guess. You picked retail and then food service. I did, anyway.

I posted Monday on the jump in unemployment of older workers in the Great Recession, using data compiled by the state Department of Employment and Economic Development.

DEED also sent a table on the breakdown of 55+ workers by economic sector and it's interesting enough I thought I'd highlight it separately. Take a look.

First quarter 2010 is the most recent data available.

I don't have any particular insight on the data but I am curious what readers see.

If nothing else, we're going to need to pay attention to older Minnesotans. The state is on the cusp of a huge jump in its 65-and-older population.

Given the Great Recession, we're likely to see more older Minnesotans working longer.
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55+ unemployment doubled since Great Recession

Posted at 1:45 PM on May 2, 2011 by Paul Tosto (2 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

On Thursday we posted some frustrating data looking at the struggles of teens trying to find work in the recession.

Those kids are the future of Minnesota's work force and we should be concerned the average jobless rate for 16- to 19- year-olds last year topped 21 percent.

There's another group, though, that should not be forgotten. Minnesotans 55 and older have seen unemployment among their peers double since 2007.

Here are numbers compiled by the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (click on the chart for a larger view).

Seventeen thousand Minnesotans 55 and older were unemployed on average in 2007 just before the Great Recession. Last year it hit 34,000. Most of those job cuts came to people 55 to 64 years old.

The data are fascinating on a few fronts. In the good years leading up to the great recession, the 55 and older labor force swelled in Minnesota. At the same, unemployment rates for those workers were incredibly low -- averaging just 1.8 percent in 2005 for those 55 to 64.

By 2010, however, the jobless rate for that age group was 6.1 percent.

That's a huge jump, accelerated in the recession that began officially in December 2007.

Yes, the jobless rates of older workers were lower compared to other age groups.

But these are Minnesotans who, for the most part, had a limited number of prime income earning years remaining before retirement.

"Can't retire now" became an uneasy refrain we heard from many in MPR's Public Insight Network after the stock market plummeted and wiped out retirement savings.

Overlooked is the unemployment suffered by people close to retirement who lost their nest egg and then lost the means to rebuild it.

Take a look at the data above. Got a different take? Post below or contact us directly at MinnEcon.

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Thanks to DEED's Rachel Vilsack, who helped us with the data. She wrote a detailed piece on this issue back in April 2009.

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For teens, a tough summer jobs outlook

Posted at 12:14 PM on April 28, 2011 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

Given the worst recession in decades, it's easy to dismiss the struggles of teen workers when so many breadwinners are still searching for work.

But in this recession youth jobs aren't simply about "fun money."

We've heard from folks in MPR's Public Insight Network how their kids' jobs have become a vital piece of household income and savings.

Those opportunities have collapsed and though we're nearly two years into the recovery, we should not expect things to improve dramatically this summer.

MPR's Annie Baxter gave listeners a detailed look at this a couple weeks ago.

Data posted this week by the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) bring the recession's damage into full view.

DEED's annual summer employment outlook puts some grim numbers to what's happened during the Great Recession and doesn't offer much hope for the coming summer teen job market.

"Although the economic recovery is picking up steam, youth summer jobs will still be hard to find in 2011 because of slack hiring and competition from older, more experienced workers," the report says. "Relative to all workers, teens have fared worse in the recession."

Retail, food service and other work once easily found during the summer months has evaporated. Many teens the past two years have been competing with older, unemployed Minnesotans for the remaining work.

But it's really when you dig into the charts you see how things have unraveled the past two years.

The first two DEED charts show pretty starkly how jobs and wages for teens imploded in the recession.

Overall, more than 29,000 teen jobs disappeared between the third quarter of 2007 (just before the recession officially began) and the third quarter of 2009, just at the official start of the recovery.

While the biggest drops lie in fast food and retail jobs, it's especially dismaying to see the huge percentage drops in teen construction and manufacturing work, where wages are much higher.

Yes, it's only about 1,300 teen construction jobs lost during a period where construction's taken an absolute beating. But these are the kinds of jobs that teach young people trade skills and can open a path to future employment for kids who may not go to college.

The recession slashed those opportunities in half. Will they return?

This next chart shows the larger, downward trend in teens working at all.

Experts can debate whether teens should work at all or how much they should work. But most of us, with some hindsight, look back at our first jobs as places where we learned responsibility, communications and other skills that started us on a career path.

We've seen some positives. The woman who oversees a paid summer internship program for Minneapolis youth told us recently the economy seems better this year than last.

We're right to worry, though, about the teens who won't be working in construction or manufacturing this summer. Nearly half the opportunities that were there before the recession are gone. Will that future workforce have the skills when Minnesota needs them?

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Is Minnesota's immigrant baby boom over?

Posted at 2:47 PM on April 22, 2011 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment, Saving & spending

We posted Thursday on how the recession is at least partly to blame for the drop in Minnesota births the past couple years.

That story was grounded in some cool data recently published by the state demographer's office.

But the demographer's report also opens a window on some surprising social change underway in Minnesota. The 20-year baby boom of births in Minnesota from foreign born mothers appears to have peaked.

Here are two key charts. The first shows that mothers born outside the U.S. have accounted for a growing portion of all births in Minnesota.

This second shows the change in total births by mothers from other countries during the recession. You'll see a significant drop -- about 10 percent -- in the number of births in Minnesota by women who were born in Mexico.

Overall, births to women born outside the U.S. dropped 3.9 percent between 2007 and 2009, "almost identical to the 4 percent decline for native-born women," the demographer's study notes.

"This is a sharp change from the trend that prevailed in the 1990s and most of the 2000s, a period which saw a rapid rise in the number and proportion of births to foreign-born women."

So what's going on? The report speculates that families from Mexico have stopped moving to Minnesota or have begun to leave as economic opportunity dried up in the recession. "Another possibility is that Mexican women, like others in Minnesota, are
postponing births in the face of economic uncertainty."

No matter where you stand on the immigration policy debate, the birth data pose a concern for Minnesota's economy.

Minnesota's non-partisan Legislative Auditor found the overall economic impact of immigrants to Minnesota has been positive.

Beyond the economic impact, their children have helped sustain small school systems that otherwise might not have survived. That's true especially in southern Minnesota. Latino students make up a third of the student body in towns like Sleepy Eye and Butterfield -- 40 percent in the St. James schools.

Now, the initial data coming from the recession years suggests a shift. Minnesota, struggling to grow jobs in the recovery, may not be the magnet for immigrants that we've come to expect the past two decades.

We're already looking at an aging, slow growth workforce. What happens if Minnesota isn't a draw for immigrants and others going forward?

Businesses might have a harder time finding workers, and there could be less demand for goods and services in the state. The Great Recession could be doing more damage to Minnesota's future than we realize.
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Great Recession, fewer kids

Posted at 10:00 AM on April 21, 2011 by Paul Tosto (1 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment, Saving & spending

The Great Recession has reduced jobs, savings and economic stability in Minnesota. It may have also cost us a chunk of our future workforce.

That was a message we heard from Gina Lund, a Minnesotan in MPR's Public Insight Network, who told us recently she and her husband had decided "not to have a second child because we cannot afford it, even with a promotion, since our student loans are also coming due at the same time."

She spoke to the kind of broad, demographic change that the recession might deliver to our state. Fascinating new research shows thousands of Minnesota families made the same decision.

"For us, it was a very difficult decision, because we initially felt like we owed it to our daughter to have another child," Lund wrote us. " However, we have seen friends lose their jobs and homes in this economy, and have seen what that has done to their children, and could not do that to our own."

After a big climb during the 2000s, Minnesota births fell about 4 percent from 2007 to 2009 and "evidence suggests at least part of the recent decrease may be related to the slumping economy," the state demographer's office wrote in a report published a few weeks ago. "It appears some Minnesotans have chosen to postpone or forgo having children because of financial uncertainty. "

The report notes that in the good economic times before the recession births in Minnesota were rising and widespread. Between 2007 and 2009, however, the birth drop was "concentrated among groups most vulnerable to unemployment and financial uncertainty: the young and the less educated."

Then as the economy began to recover in late 2009, births numbers were higher, "suggesting the recession effect may be leveling off."

The state demographer's data show a surprising drop in the numbers of foreign-born women having children in Minnesota. We'll get at that in a separate post Friday.

For now, the overall trends are intriguing.

Here's a look from the demographer's office at the run up in births from 1980-2006, including the jump in good economic times.

Here's what's happened in the Great Recession, which began in December 2007 and officially ended in June 2009.

Similar trends can be seen nationally. This chart's from the Pew Research Center.

For the nation, it could be simply a footnote on the recession. In Minnesota, though, the trends may be more worrisome because the state's workforce is already projected to age rapidly and grow slowly over the next two decades.

Lund, who lives in the Twin Cities area and works for a construction equipment manufacturing company, gave us some insight into how the economy influenced her decision.

We are very good at budgeting and we ran the numbers, both as a two-earner family with childcare, and with my husband or myself staying home and getting a part-time job in the evenings, and no matter how we looked at it, our cash flow would have been negative, which for the short-term would have been OK because we have worked hard to have about 3 months of bill payments saved up, but if anything serious were to happen (furnace breaks down, major car repairs, loss of job) we could have been at risk of losing everything.

We both are in fairly stable jobs, but we have both faced pay cuts, while the costs of food, fuel, and childcare continue to go up.

We also saw friends who had to pawn their wedding rings to put food on the table, so for us, the risk was not worth it.

"We decided that we were comfortable with our one child," she added, "and feel that we can give her a good, happy life."
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Student loans: A family burden?

Posted at 3:15 PM on April 19, 2011 by Paul Tosto (2 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment, Saving & spending

There's no doubt many parents are helping shoulder the financial burdens of their young adult children in the recession. We posted in 2009 and 2010 about recent college grads moving home because they couldn't afford to live on their own.

But what happens when parents must take on the debts of their young adult children? We started thinking about that after hearing from Vicki Brady.

She and her husband took over the student loan payments of their 24 year old son as he struggled to stay current on more than $100,000 in school debt.

He landed a job after college but it doesn't pay enough for basic living expenses and the loans.

Brady and her husband stepped in to help. To afford it, however, they've had to stop contributing to their retirement accounts.

The Cloquet woman says the new obligation may also make it nearly impossible for them to cosign college loans for their daughter in a couple years.

Brady, part of MPR's Public Insight Network, says her son worked all through college to pay his bills, "so he's not a slacker, just overwhelmed." He's moving up in his company but "there is no way he will make enough money any time soon to take over the payment on his student loan."

Student loan debt has risen dramatically here and across the country.

Last week, the New York Times reported, "Student loan debt outpaced credit card debt for the first time last year and is likely to top a trillion dollars this year as more students go to college and a growing share borrow money to do so."

In Minnesota, student borrowing grew faster than tuition or inflation over the past decade, state Office of Higher Education data show.

Among students graduating from Minnesota public universities, 77 percent had student loans, the average amount borrowed was $22,000, and the monthly payment on a 10-year payment schedule was $253, the OHE says.

Defaults are low on student loans, probably because the consequences are so scary. It can kill your credit rating You also become ineligible for more federal student aid if you ever want to go back to school, the U.S. Department of Education notes.

While most of the focus has been the burden on the student, Brady's story reminds us the cascading effects of this kind of debt.

According to the Times, it's become a kind of anti-dowry, forcing young people to wait longer to buy a house, get married and have children.

But it's also reaching into family finances, triggering longer term problems.
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What's your May economic forecast?

Posted at 1:16 PM on April 14, 2011 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment, Saving & spending

We got pulled off economy reporting for a couple weeks to help with flood coverage. Now that the immediate flood danger has passed, we're back to the day job!

So we'll start back asking questions. What's May looking like for your household economy? Does the recession feel like it's over in your home?

Post something below or use our handy form.

Feels like a strange time in the economy. We've been reaching out to Minnesotans in MPR's Public Insight Network and hearing some stories of better times. We were really encouraged by Tayler Anderson's story a few weeks ago.

Anderson, a Minnesota native we'd been keeping tabs on, found work in her field nearly two years after graduating from college, though the work was in Portland, Ore.

Closer to home, we're still getting stories of young people struggling.

June will mark the official two year anniversary of the economic recovery. State data released today showed Minnesota's unemployment rate slipping to 6.6 percent, which is far better than the national rate. And yet job growth in Minnesota the past year has been slower than in the nation.

A state labor analyst today said at the current rate of job creation, it'll take four and a half years to gain back the roughly 140,000 jobs Minnesota lost in the recession. Yeesh.

Tell us what you're seeing.

We'll take the responses and put them together in a future post and it'll give us all a better look at what's really happening with Minnesota's economy.

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Slow motion job growth pain

Posted at 10:05 AM on April 18, 2011 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

We're in an odd and frustrating period in Minnesota's economic recovery. The high octane job growth we've come to expect following a recession isn't there this time.

Even as officials Thursday were applauding Minnesota's lower jobless rate, they acknowledged at the current growth rate it will take another 4.5 years for Minnesota to regain the job levels lost in the recession.

That's dramatically different than past recessions and it's a reason we ought to be concerned.

We started looking at data kept by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis of seasonally adjusted employment for the past 80 years. (Here's a link to the data).

The early 80s is the downturn that looks most like our Great Recession. From the monthly employment data kept by the Fed, here's a look at the pre-recession employment peak, the recession trough and the return to pre-recession employment

December 1979: 1.788 million
November 1982: 1.685 million
March 1984 (16 months from trough): 1.791 million

So in the early '80s recession, it took 16 months to return to pre-recession levels following a nearly 6 percent drop in employment.

Here's the same data for the Great Recession

February 2008: 2.779 million
September 2009: 2.621 million
January 2011 (16 months from trough): 2.642 million

In both eras, Minnesota's economy lost about six percent of its employment. However,it took the state about 16 months to gain back all the jobs it lost during the early 1980s recessions. This time, it's taken 16 months to gain back less than 15 percent of the jobs lost. Not great.

The slow motion growth creates a lot of problems for people looking for work. We've been particularly concerned about young adults in this kind of economy. It's pretty hard to start out and while there are some signs things are improving, Minnesotans in MPR's Public Insight Network are still sharing some frustrating stories.

Dorisa Nelson graduated from North Dakota State in 2009. She has a master's degree in architecture and a bachelor's in anthropology and environmental design and hopes to become a licensed Minnesota architect.

But this recession has been particularly cruel to construction and the professions that support it. Architecture jobs are down 30 percent since the recession began (click on the chart for a larger view).

(Source: MN Department of Employment and Economic Development)

We started talking to Dorisa in late 2009 and we checked in recently to see if she's seen the market improve. She's still trying to start her career.

"I personally have not really had any luck in finding a full time job, in architecture, or anything else," she wrote us.

From what I've heard, all my classmates who were lucky enough to find jobs in Fargo after we graduated lost their jobs last summer and only two have been able to find work in architecture- one moved to the east coast, and the other was actually fortunate enough to find a job in the Twin Cities so he will be moving down here next month.

One thing that I find kind of interesting is that both of these classmates were older than the average student when we were in school, late twenties I think. Just an interesting coincidence.

One of my best friends from college, who was very talented and passionate about architecture gave up and opened a bakery. Luckily, she is a very gifted baker and so far she is doing pretty well.

Most of my friends now are either back in school or working at some kind of part time job and living back home with their parents, or both. Actually, if I consider my 5 closest unmarried friends, 4 of them are living with their parents or a sibling. And these are smart people- all with bachelors degrees, some with or working on masters degrees.

The fact that they are still all at home does nothing for their self-esteem.

"I just really want to start a career in something, instead of just finding a job to do for now and putting off starting a career even further than I've already had to."

The job market will improve. There are signs that it's happening now. But how long does that take? We saw the fuse lit on a 20 year run of dramatic employment increases following the early 1980s recessions. That's typically what happens.

But we've technically been in an economic recovery for more than a year and a half now and there's no sign of that kind of momentum.

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Good signs in a summer jobs program?

Posted at 12:30 PM on March 21, 2011 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

Record demand for a popular Minneapolis youth summer jobs program last year told the story of the Great Recession pretty plainly.

More than 4,000 young people applied to the STEP-UP program in 2010 for 1,350 paid summer internships; two out of three who applied couldn't get in. We saw the mismatch as a sign of the tough economic times.

This year, though, things are a little better. While there were still more jobs seekers than jobs, the number of applicants fell by about 500 compared to 2010.

Program leaders see some positives in that for the larger economy; they're also hearing good things from local businesses about hiring that weren't there a year ago.

"There is some sign of the economy picking up," says STEP-UP director Tammy Dickinson.

STEP-UP targets young people from low and moderate income families. Last year, it drew a lot of interest from youth coming from higher income homes.

That's ebbed. Applications from those higher income households fell in 2011, says Dickinson.

The jobs pay at least $7.25 an hour, so they are a big deal in a recession that's hit young people particularly hard.

This year, STEP-UP is the umbrella program for all Minneapolis summer job efforts. The goal: 2,400 youth employed through local businesses and organizations. Dickinson said they have about 1,700 jobs confirmed for the summer and are still recruiting.

(If you're a business interested in the program, click here for information.)

Businesses also seem more receptive this year than last.

"More employers that weren't considering it last year are maybe willing to talk to us just because (last year) they were laying off folks. Now they're not laying off and thinking about projects" that could use an intern, she adds.

As we noted in a prior post, that summer cash isn't just "fun money" any more. In many households it's a vital piece of household income.

If STEP-UP manages to meet its total recruiting goal, the final ratio will work out to about 1.5 applicants per job this summer, much better than last year's three applicants per job.

It's a small sign that 21 months after the recession officially ended, a real recovery may be on the horizon.
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On, Minnesota?

Posted at 1:50 PM on March 17, 2011 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

We've reported before that the hand wringing about Minnesota losing out, economy-wise, to Wisconsin, isn't supported by the data. Facts show Minnesota's done better than the Badger State in keeping people employed and adding jobs in the recovery.

But now we have a compelling, long-term view of the two state economies that should convince you Minnesota's been topping Wisconsin for more than a decade.

The chart below shows the Coincident Economic Activity Index for Minnesota, Wisconsin and the U.S. for the last 30-plus years.

The index is produced by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. It calculates the index using nonfarm payroll employment, average hours worked in manufacturing, the unemployment rate, and inflation adjusted wages. Long-term growth in the state's index matches long-term growth in its GDP, the Philly Fed says.

It's a pretty well respected measure of state economic health. And thanks to the St. Louis Fed we can put the data easily into chart form (St. Louis updated all its numbers today, through January). Click on the chart for a larger view. Or click here for a really large view.

'

It shows the Minnesota and Wisconsin economies closely matched for 20 years but then separating around 2000 with Minnesota on top. The economic activity gap continues and then widens during the recession.

The St. Louis Fed charts mirror what the Minneapolis Fed published in December.

We'd love to hear from folks from either state about the data and how they read it. What happened around 1999-2000 that set Minnesota on a stronger economic path than Wisconsin? What's your experience been?

Post something below or contact us directly at MinnEcon.

It's a discussion we ought to have and one that can be grounded in good stats.

Jed Carlson/jcarlson@superiortelegram.com via Duluth News Tribune.

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Four MN cities still have double digit unemployment rates

Posted at 10:30 AM on March 17, 2011 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

What's up with Brainerd?

That was the first thing out of my mouth when I started looking through the unemployment rates of major Minnesota cities.

At at time when much of the talk's been about Minnesota's overall declining unemployment rate (officials today said the rate is steady at 6.7 percent), Brainerd hit 18 percent in January.

You don't hear a lot about the city numbers. The data aren't perfect. They are not seasonally adjusted so the jobless numbers always jump in the cold weather months. The populations are relatively small so it doesn't take a lot to get percentages swinging.

Still, the trends aren't good.

If you compare January jobless rates before, during and after the Great Recession, it looks like Brainerd and other towns are setting new "normal" unemployment rates significantly higher than they've been in the past.

Four Minnesota cities had double digit unemployment rates in January. Brainerd was tops. Grand Rapids came in at 14.7 percent, Virginia 11.5 percent and Cloquet at 10.4 percent.

Check out the charts below for each of those towns (click on the chart for a larger view).

Of the four, Brainerd seems the most worrisome. Yes, unemployment looks better (11.8 percent) when spread over Cass and Crow Wing counties. But you're still talking about a lot of the workforce on the sidelines, not producing.

Persistently high jobless numbers mean other parts of the economy are struggling, too. With nearly one out of five people unemployed in town, it's no shock Brainerd is struggling with high home foreclosure rates .

Other cities have struggled in the recession. Hibbing crossed the 18 percent jobless line in June 2009.

Brainerd hit 21 percent in 2009. MPR's Annie Baxter took an in-depth look then at what was happening. Construction woes were a big part of the problem.

The recovery in mining has at least brought the Hibbing jobless rate down below 10 percent.

What will save Brainerd?

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Goodbye, entry level job?

Posted at 1:25 PM on March 16, 2011 by Paul Tosto (1 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

Last summer, we wrote a post that waved goodbye to the entry level job.

It was a pretty compelling argument -- entry level opportunities slipping away -- based on data from the state Department of Employment and Economic Development.

At the time, we thought we might have been a little over dramatic in our phrasing. Turns out we weren't scary enough.

Entry level openings in the Twin Cities -- those that don't require previous work experience -- plummeted in the past year, from 26 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 to only 17 percent by the end of 2010.

In the ancient times -- 2001 -- nearly 40 percent of Twin Cities job openings were entry-level.

Here's the updated data from DEED (click on the chart for a larger view)

As the "no experience needed" jobs have evaporated, job openings requiring a college education have stayed consistently high.

The data really match up with the growing worries about a "lost generation" of Minnesota workers. State Demographer Tom Gillaspy recently wrote:

There is concern that there is a disturbing and growing mismatch between the skills of those looking for work and the skills employers seek to hire. If left unchecked, this could lead to a situation of a "lost generation," where those with the necessary skills do very well while those without the desired skills will struggle economically for the remainder of their lives.

We may be seeing a shift in the labor force widening the gap here between haves and have-nots.

A Georgetown University report estimates 70 percent of Minnesota jobs will require some education beyond high school by 2018. That's one of the highest percentages of any state in the country.

Georgetown projects Minnesota with 902,000 job vacancies from 2008 through 2018 from new jobs and retirements. Only a quarter of those will go to be available to those with no more than a high school graduation.

Bottom line: If you were a young adult a decade ago you had a decent chance of getting a job without prior experience or a college degree.

Those opportunities are nearly gone. But the people who need them are still here. What happens to them?
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Long road from college to a job

Posted at 2:46 PM on March 22, 2011 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

For more than a year, I've been following Tayler Anderson, a Minnesota native and young college grad trying to land her first job during the recession. In October 2009, she signed her email to me, AKA desperate recent grad.

Her mom, Celia Gust, dropped us a note recently with a new way to describe her daughter: employed.

A graphic design major who graduated in spring 2009, Anderson finally found work with a Portland, Ore., design firm. Her story holds some hope for grads who still can't find work in their chosen field.

I met Gust and Anderson back in fall 2009 as I wrote about the struggles of young adults in the recession. Gust, part of MPR's Public Insight Network, and Anderson offered us a look at the challenges of new grads finding their way in the lousy economy and how to help kids find their footing.

Anderson, then, was confronting the recession head-on, cold-calling for jobs and working part time at a Bath and Body Works to pay the bills.

"In a program where in previous years every student was placed in a job before graduation," she wrote, "we now find ourselves moving back home and working the same types of jobs we were before we even attended college. Four months out and none of the extremely talented people I graduated with in my program has a 'real' job."

Things started to turn her way after she landed a paid internship with Columbia Sportswear that let her earn some money and get a foothold on her career.

The nine-month internship ended in November and Anderson was back to searching.

"Tayler looked for work anywhere and everywhere. She sent hundreds of resumes to any job that looked remotely like it might fit," said Gust. "She got one call back from someplace in Long Beach, Ca. She was figuring out how she could live there ...but nothing came of it. She was even about to start an Interior Design program at a local junior college because three months of unemployment was too much idleness to handle and she needed to do something."

The frustration broke in February when Anderson answered a Craig's List ad for a graphic designer. Days after the first interview she was offered the job. "As far as she knows they didn't interview anyone else and they got over 300 resumes in the first day," said Gust.

"If you asked her to describe her dream job for this time in her life, this job would be it. I am so happy and relieved that she is finally employed in a job that she went to school for." It's even more rewarding since Anderson's car had been stolen weeks before landing the job.

There are a few lessons to draw from Anderson's journey.

College educated young people have been hit hard in the Great Recession. We've written a lot about the struggles of young Minnesotans trying to find work in the recession. But it's been harder than maybe many of us realized.

New college graduates in 2010, "entered a labor market with the highest rates of unemployment in at least a generation...Most young adults that come across hard economic times will fall through the large gaps in the public safety net," the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank wrote last May.

Here's a telling chart from that report:

Don't discount the power of the paid internship. Her ability to snag a paid internship that gave her practical experience helped bridge the gap between college and work life. That bridge has become increasingly more important during the recession.

This chart from the job site Simply Hired shows how paid internships grew during the downturn.

They're still a relatively small part of the job scene -- at its peak last year paid internships made up only about 1,800 of the 3 million U.S. job listings in Simply Hired's database. But, as Anderson discovered, it can be a lifeline.

It can be a long road. With the economy really good for so long before the recession, we lost track of the fact that a lot of people don't get their dream job right out of college.

Dating myself now, but I graduated in 1984 following what was the worst recession in decades. I was juggling three part-time jobs and none of them seemed to offer any hope of a paying, long-term future. After months, one of them -- a small newspaper -- offered me a full-time job and a journalism "career" was born.

Anderson's journey took close to two years with a lot of rough spots, including having her car stolen. But the good stuff came with perseverance.

"Life is good," said Gust. "You just have to be patient sometimes and work your way through the rough spots."

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Is the temp work boom permanent?

Posted at 4:30 PM on March 14, 2011 by Paul Tosto (2 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

Temporary help hiring has been one of the bright spots in an otherwise stumbling recovery. While other sectors continue to struggle, temp work numbers are back to pre-recession levels in Minnesota.

But here I come barging in the door with the cranky economist question: Is that OK?

Conventional wisdom says growth in temp jobs leads the way out of recession. Companies see better times ahead but go with temps first to handle the growing business demand and convert to permanent workers when they're certain the recovery is for real.

This time around, the worry is the spike we've seen in temp work is permanent and that the "new normal" includes a workforce that will operate with a high percentage of temps, trapping workers in jobs with no long term prospects and limiting the growth in new, permanent full-time jobs.

The data, though, tell us we shouldn't worry. Not yet, anyway.

Even with the jump the past year, temporary staffing jobs made up only 2.4 percent of Minnesota's total statewide employment in the third quarter of 2010 and 3.1 percent in the Twin Cities labor market, according to data from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.

Here's a chart looking at employment by temporary staffing firms in the Twin Cities and statewide. About 80 percent of Minnesota's temp staffing is in The Cities.

The third quarter data is the most recent available from DEED. It shows that the percentage of temp staffing in the state really is not out of the ordinary.

It's the speed of the temp turnaround that's surprising.

The chart shows it took about six years for temp staffing to return to pre-recession levels following the milder 2001 downturn. This time, it's taken only three years to recover during a much worse economy.

"It is really interesting that the employment staffing industry recovery is so strong. It is certainly stronger than our last recession even though this recession was deeper," says Kyle Uphoff, a state labor analyst. "It probably mirrors the hesitation of employers to take on full time staff."

If firms can remain competitive with temp workers, "they could make this a permanent strategy -- particularly if they rely on lower skill workers. However," he adds, "it is still way too early to make that pronouncement."

At this point, there's nothing to indicate the jump in the number and percentage of temp workers in Minnesota is a long term worry.

I'm reminded, though, of a piece Chris Farrell wrote for MinnEcon last year.

He looked at research showing the long term problems temp work causes for low-skill, low-educated workers. "Employment Research suggest that temp work actually lowers a worker's employment and income prospects over time," he wrote. "It doesn't lead to full time work."

That could be the biggest permanent problem in temp labor.
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BONUS INFO:

Last spring, a Minneapolis Federal Reserve survey found a surge in temp demand across the Upper Midwest (click on the chart for a larger view).

My MPR colleagues have examined the issue in different ways lately, including Mike Caputo's conversation with MPR readers and Molly Bloom's MinnEcon post -- Temp work, permanent anxiety.

The Star Tribune also wrote a detailed piece recently on temp workers.

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What's your April economic forecast?

Posted at 4:04 PM on March 8, 2011 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

We are terrible prognosticators here at MinnEcon. Last fall, we convinced Ms. MinnEcon to give up her seat for the first round of the playoffs to a friend from New York, arguing there'd be plenty of other playoff games to attend once the Twins beat the Yankees.

We don't guess well. But we do trust in the stories and insights of Minnesotans on the economy. Pretty much each month the past two years we've asked Minnesotans to tell us what their household economy looks like in the month ahead.

Your responses have helped us find stories we wouldn't have seen otherwise.

So give us a heads-up on the coming month and tell us: How's April looking for you?

In late January, we asked Minnesotans in MPR's Public Insight Network what February looked like for them and we started getting responses showing some optimism creeping back, especially on the question, "Does the recession feel like it's over in your home?"

It's not scientific but it reflects a basic reality: The people who feel like the recession's over are people who have jobs. The people who can't see the end of the recession are those without jobs or who can't find full time work.

It's something we wrote about Monday -- the wide, persistent gap in Minnesota and across the country between the "traditional" unemployment rate and the much broader measure that includes people who are working part-time but want full time as well as "discouraged workers" -- people who've stopped looking but who would take a job if they could find one.

About one in 7 working age Minnesotans are in that boat, roughly twice the traditional jobless rate.

So help us get a handle on April.

Tell us your current financial outlook and if you expect things to improve. Think you'll save more or spend more than in the prior month? If you're employed, are you seeing at your job that tells you something about where the economy's headed?

Post below or contact us directly at MinnEcon and share a story.

We'll write a post, or two, later this month from the responses we get. Every response makes us smarter about the economy.

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Nuggets from the latest MN jobless data

Posted at 11:40 AM on March 4, 2011 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

Sometimes it takes two or three looks at the state's monthly jobless data report to find stuff you didn't see in the first run.

We spent some time trolling through the release and accompanying data.
and found some additional stuff worth vetting.

Labor force found? Back in the summer we started looking at the big drops in Minnesota's labor force and asking why so many people were leaving.

Before yesterday, the labor force decline looked like this, a drop of more than 30,000 since April (click on the chart for a larger view).

With revisions and benchmarking, the state data now show the labor force down about 9,000 from April. Here's what the revised chart looks like.

It's hard to argue statistical revisions. We'll trust that the current data is the best look at what's been happening. The good news here is there are far fewer individuals being counted as leaving the workforce.

The bad news is that the labor force participation rate -- the percentage of working age people who have a job or are unemployed and seeking a job -- remains at levels not seen since the late 1980s.

The same is true for Minnesota's employment to population ratio -- the proportion of the state's working age population that is employed.

As we've noted before, in a recovering economy, the opposite should be happening -- discouraged workers who left the work force in bad times are supposed to be returning along as opportunities increase.

So while the revised labor force numbers look better than the old, the fundamental worries are still there. When people are not participating in the work force, it's a good bet they aren't producing goods or services, spending money to fuel the economy (housing and retail come to mind) or generating taxable income to pay for public programs.

No question that the 4,604 drop in the labor force was a factor in the drop in Minnesota's unemployment rate to 6.7 percent. If you're out of the labor force you don't get counted as unemployed.

This is an ongoing worry across the nation. Today's drop in the national unemployment rate to 8.9 percent is great news. But the participation rate dropped again. The last time there was such a low percentage of working age people not in the work force? 1984.

Manufacturing not as great as we thought.For all the gloom in the state's jobs picture during 2010, manufacturing appeared to be the bright spot. In January, the state said manufacturing gained 10,700 jobs in 2010, beating every other sector in the first full year of recession recovery.

The latest revised data show only a 4,900 year-over-year job gain now.

Now we're told "education and health services" has driven most of the job growth the past 12 months. That's not necessarily a bad thing. But are those the kinds of jobs to help get the economy rolling?

If you look at the job categories where things get made -- construction and manufacturing -- the state's only gained 600 jobs over the past year.

Officials still believe Minnesota won't recover all the jobs lost in the Great Recession until mid-2013, two-plus years to go.

Take a look at the report and data and tell me what you see.

Later today, we'll take a look at a Minnesota employment gap that isn't closing.

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The Minnesota jobless gap that isn't closing

Posted at 10:00 AM on March 7, 2011 by Paul Tosto (1 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

Last week was good for jobless rates. Minnesota's January rate fell below 7 percent, the first time since 2008 the announced monthly rate was less than seven. Earlier today, the U.S. rate also fell to a nearly two year low.

Good stuff.

And yet we know the announced rate never tells the complete story of the job markets. The broader measures of employment still signal a troubled jobs market.

We're talking about U-6, a measure that not only counts people employed and unemployed but also takes into account people who are working part-time but want full time as well as "discouraged workers" -- people who've stopped looking but who would take a job if they could find one.

Tack those on to the traditional unemployed and you get an average 2010 jobless rate of 13.8 percent in Minnesota during 2010, according to data released recently by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That's obviously a lot higher than the 7.3 percent average for 2010 using the official calculation -- total unemployed as a percent of the civilian labor force.

The real problem, though is how the gap has widened between the traditional unemployment rate and the broader measure. The recession not only shoved many people out of work, it ballooned the number of "marginally attached" workers.

That's a gap, moreover, that hasn't shown signs of closing despite more than 18 months of recovery.

Here's a chart with the Minnesota data (click on the chart for a larger view)

In the chart, "Jobless rate +" is the U-6 measure: Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers.

Minnesota's data mirrors the U.S. data.

The data tell us that that there are a lot of Minnesotans besides the traditional unemployed having trouble in this job market.

State economists put it succinctly in their recent forecast: The basic unemployment rate should hang around 7 percent for most of 2011 and it will be mid-2013 before Minnesota regains job numbers hit prior to the recession, and nearly one in seven Minnesotans who want a full time job can't find one.

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Highlights, lowlights from new Minnesota budget forecast

Posted at 7:00 PM on February 28, 2011 by Paul Tosto (1 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

A billion dollar drop in Minnesota's projected budget deficit was the biggest and best news out of today's updated Minnesota forecasts

Deeper in the report, though, are some fascinating, though not encouraging, nuggets about the Minnesota economy and where it might be headed.

Bottom line: Things are improving but there's nothing to suggest 2011 is a big rebound year. Don't expect the jobless rate to show any significant improvement this year. Construction will continue to take its lumps.

We're still looking at another two and a half years before the state returns to pre-recession employment levels.

We'll know a little more Wednesday when the state releases employment data and the unemployment rate for January. But here are the important takeaways from today's official Minnesota economic forecast.

Unemployment. Likely to hover around 7 percent for much of 2011; It will take until mid mid-2013 before Minnesota regains job numbers hit prior to the recession.

When officials add together the unemployed who are actively seeking work, discouraged workers who've left the workforce and underemployed workers working part time but seeking full time work, they calculate there are nearly one in seven Minnesotans who want a full time job but can't find one.

That's roughly 14 percent -- or double the better known monthly jobless rate.

The "slow pace of job creation continues to make it very difficult to put the
state's unemployed and underutilized workers back to work promptly," the report says, noting that the state Department of Employment and Economic Development estimates that...

...in December a seasonally adjusted 206,000 residents were actively seeking work in the state but unable to find employment. This is down only slightly from 216,000 in early 2010 and remains well above the 136,000 seeking work just prior to the recession over three years ago.

Construction. We've written a lot about the woes of the construction business. It's the sector that used to pull economies out of recession. Not this time.

"Residential home construction remains a drag on Minnesota's economic outlook," the official state economic outlook notes.

The construction industry is forecast to lose an additional 900 jobs between the end of 2010 and early 2012, before slowly beginning to recover in mid-to-late 2012 and 2013. The large excess supply of homes built during the housing boom, the slowdown in household formation due to the recession, and weak demand for building activity in 2011 and early 2012 are principal assumptions behind this outlook.

Worst recession in decades?

For most of this recession and recovery, I argued that for as bad as it's been the past few years, the recession(s) of the early 1980s were worse. I started changing my tune last fall as the national unemployment rate stayed above 9 percent.

With this graph from today's report, I officially concede: This recession is worse. (Click the chart for a larger view).

For comparison purposes, here's what I wrote about the November state economic forecast.

The recovery is now officially longer than the Great Recession. But if you don't have a full-time job, it doesn't feel like it. That estimate of 14 percent of Minnesotans who want a full time job but can't find one is pretty telling.

Take a look at today's report and let me know what jumps out at you.

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MN jobless data release pushed back to Wednesday

Posted at 12:30 PM on February 28, 2011 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

UPDATE: Minnesota's Department of Employment and Economic Development this morning said state employment / unemployment data for January will be released Wednesday afternoon, not Tuesday morning as originally scheduled.

Here's our primer from Friday on what to look for.

Gulp! was the expression we used last month when we wrote about Minnesota's unemployment data.

We were hoping that December data would show we had turned the corner.

Instead, jobs took a cliff dive -- 22,400 fewer jobs in December versus November, the biggest monthly drop since at least 1990, losses that chopped the state's over-the-year job gains nearly in half.

So forgive us a little wincing as we wait for January's data, due Tuesday. For every good employment sign, it seems we get one that doesn't look so great.

We keep coming back to this graph showing Minnesota still has far more job seekers than openings.

Better than 2009 but still not great.

As we've noted in prior posts, we have a wide, persistent gap between job openings and people who need jobs and worries that many of the unemployed don't have the skills to fill the jobs that will open up and grow into the future.

Here and in the nation we also have the equally weird phenomenon of people continuing to exit the workforce despite the economic recovery.

The state's jobless rate edged down to 7 percent in December, which in most cases would be grounds for applause. It's not.

Even if Tuesday's data show the jobless rate edged down again in January, we'll all need to look behind the data: Did the economy add jobs? Have those 30,000-plus Minnesotans who've left the labor force since last spring started to return yet?

Until we can feel good about that data, the jobless rate won't mean much.

Tell us what you're seeing in the job market around you. Post something below or contact us directly at MinnEcon.

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What will Tuesday's jobless data tell us?

Posted at 4:34 PM on February 25, 2011 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

Gulp! was the expression we used last month when we wrote about Minnesota's unemployment data.

We were hoping that December data would show we had turned the corner.

Instead, jobs took a cliff dive -- 22,400 fewer jobs in December versus November, the biggest monthly drop since at least 1990, losses that chopped the state's over-the-year job gains nearly in half.

So forgive us a little wincing as we wait for January's data, due Tuesday. For every good employment sign, it seems we get one that doesn't look so great.

We keep coming back to this graph showing Minnesota still has far more job seekers than openings.

Better than 2009 but still not great.

As we've noted in prior posts, we have a wide, persistent gap between job openings and people who need jobs and worries that many of the unemployed don't have the skills to fill the jobs that will open up and grow into the future.

Here and in the nation we also have the equally weird phenomenon of people continuing to exit the workforce despite the economic recovery.

The state's jobless rate edged down to 7 percent in December, which in most cases would be grounds for applause. It's not.

Even if Tuesday's data show the jobless rate edged down again in January, we'll all need to look behind the data: Did the economy add jobs? Have those 30,000-plus Minnesotans who've left the labor force since last spring started to return yet?

Until we can feel good about that data, the jobless rate won't mean much.

Tell us what you're seeing in the job market around you. Post something below or contact us directly at MinnEcon.

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Where are the workers?

Posted at 2:02 PM on February 24, 2011 by Paul Tosto (1 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

We've written a lot recently about Minnesota's declining workforce and the potential problems that go with it.

But the trends are nationwide. The Economist magazine weighed in recently with a piece asking the same question: Where are the workers?

Minnesota's always been a state with high labor force participation rates and high employment to population ratios. It's been falling since April.

The initial big drops looked like they might be statistical noise. But it's continued a slow decline since the spring with nothing to indicate that it's coming back. More than 30,000 Minnesotans have left the labor force since the spring.

One local theory is that many of the folks who left the labor force went back to college. Community college enrollments jumped in 2008 and 2009. But we would have expected to see those people start to re-enter the workforce.

There's a bigger concern that the marketable skills of the unemployed or new grads don't seem to match up with the needs of a recovering economy -- a "lost generation" of Minnesota workers, in the words of the state demographer.

Need more reason for concern? MPR's Annie Baxter noted in her recent story that, "a drop in workforce participation echoes a decline in Minnesota's prosperity relative to other states. Minnesota ranked seventh in total income per person in 2003. The state has fallen to 14th."

Across the nation, writes The Economist:

Most striking has been the drop for men aged 25-54, who have long had the highest participation rates....The participation rate of men has been declining for years, apparently because many who lost their high-paid, low-skilled jobs in manufacturing, transport and construction have retired or registered as disabled rather than retraining.

Julia Coronado, an economist at BNP Paribas, reckons a wave of early retirements by state- and local-government staff and manufacturing workers may explain the latest downturn.

Here's a chart from The Economist story showing the paths of unemployment and people in the work force.

We've been looking at this issue in a bunch of recent posts.

"Lost generation" of Minnesota workers?
Labor force decline: Is it a guy thing?
No good news on MN labor force decline
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Twin Cities pay: Big hit in recession, big bounceback in recovery?

Posted at 4:27 PM on February 22, 2011 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment, Twin Cities metro

Not immediately sure what to make of this new data from the feds on Twin Cities pay and benefits during the Great Recession.

But it looks like our region took a bigger-than-the-nation hit in wages and total compensation during the Great Recession but is swinging back now in the "recovery," faster than other major cities.

Couple of intriguing Bureau of Labor Statistics charts. These are twelve-month percent changes in the BLS Employment Cost Index -- private industry workers, not seasonally adjusted.

Twin Cities "wages and salaries, the largest component of total compensation costs, advanced at a 3.2-percent pace for the 12-month period ended December 2010," BLS wrote. "Nationwide, total compensation costs rose 2.1 percent and wages and salaries, 1.8 percent over the same period."

The data has me thinking about comparing wage increases in Minnesota. The state Department of Employment and Economic Development keeps good data on this.

I'm going to look at some statewide wage data during the recession, maybe compare private sector pay vs public sector pay over the past three years.

Overall, the BLS data is positive and reinforces the notion that for people who have jobs in the Twin Cities, there's reason for optimism.

Take a look at the report and the data and drop us a line if anything intrigues you.

Here's one final chart comparing to the Twin Cities to other cities.

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Minnesota job seekers find it's still a buyer's market

Posted at 5:30 PM on February 17, 2011 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

The economic recovery is now longer than the Great Recession. But given the glacial pace of job growth here and in the nation, the gap between jobs available and the unemployed just hasn't closed much.

Newly released data from Minnesota's Department of Employment and Economic Development show the ratio of jobless to job vacancies is better than it was in 2009 but there are still far more job seekers than openings.

The DEED chart below tells the story.

Yes, the fourth quarter 2010 data look better than 2009 -- 5.8 unemployed people per job vacancy compared to 8.2 a year earlier. But the gap between vacancies and unemployment remains persistently stubborn.

Here's another way to look at the data, from the DEED report.

The numbers reinforce the growing concern about a "lost generation" of Minnesota workers.people who have had careers torpedoed in the recession but don't have skills for life after the recession and may suffer, economically long after the recession's end.

Here's a breakdown of the Minnesota vacancies in the last quarter of 2010.

So more than a year and a half into the official recovery, we have a wide, persistent gap between job openings and people who need jobs and worries that many of the unemployed don't have the skills to fill the jobs that will open up and grow into the future.

As the state demographer recently put it, we need to be worried about, "a disturbing and growing mismatch between the skills of those looking for work and the skills employers seek to hire."
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'Lost generation' of Minnesota workers?

Posted at 10:00 AM on February 17, 2011 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

We spent a chunk of 2009 wringing our hands over the state's young talent leaving Minnesota. New grads and young adults in MPR's Public Insight Network shared stories of how the recession was crippling professional opportunities.

At about the same time, the state economist and state demographer were projecting a slow growing, rapidly aging labor force in Minnesota after a decade of robust growth.

Now, those worries are converging in ways that could mean serious problems for Minnesota's economic future -- regardless of the recovery.

State Demographer Tom Gillaspy and his colleagues write in a new report about a disturbing and growing mismatch between the skills of those looking for work and the skills employers seek to hire" and a "lost generation" of Minnesota workers, "where those with the necessary skills do very well while those without the desired skills will struggle economically for the remainder of their lives."

If you're not worried about this, you should be. Here's why.

We have young adults unable to find work. We have Minnesotans leaving the state labor force in unprecedented numbers.

And the fastest growing student populations in Minnesota's high schools -- the people who you will increasingly depend upon in your old age to pay taxes, keep your Social Security solvent, build Minnesota's economy and its quality of life -- are the least prepared to take on that future.

Collectively, it's a pretty grim outlook, a future where Minnesota doesn't have the talent to fill the jobs the state needs the most but must still contend with a surplus of workers whose skills no longer match up with the economy's needs.

Some highlights:

Labor force growth will likely continue to slow, with virtually all economic growth achieved due to increases in per-worker productivity. Without major efforts to invest in human and physical capital, we will not see the productivity growth necessary to counter the slowing growth of the labor force.

By the 2020s, Minnesota's labor force growth rate will be at record-low levels. Total hours worked are expected to slow even more, as increasing numbers of older workers shift from full-time to part-time jobs.

Slower workforce growth could improve opportunities for workers, but another possibility is that employers will resort more to alternatives to hiring such as labor-saving devices, downsizing, and moving to labor markets with more qualified labor. (emphasis added).

That last paragraph is pretty powerful. Moving to labor markets with more qualified labor? Hey, this is a Minnesota!

Truth is we've been conditioned to believe that Minnesota will always be able to keep and draw talent. But the recession is exposing that conceit.

Almost exactly a year ago, we asked: Who will grow the economy and maintain Minnesota's quality of life? Anyone?
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Stimulus job count torture

Posted at 12:36 PM on February 10, 2011 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Economic stimulus, Jobs & unemployment

Harry Potter fans know that when the scar on Harry's forehead starts to burn, it means Lord Voldemort, his archenemy, is near.

Something similar happens to me when I write about job creation and government stimulus -- federal or state. Is there any economic subject that triggers so much statistical agony?

My head starting pounding again after reading the news release from Gov. Mark Dayton's office about a proposed $1 billion bonding bill.

As proof of the potential jobs benefit, the release cited data from economist Stephen Fuller of George Mason University arguing that, "at a time of unemployed workers and excess production capacity, each $1 billion of spending on nonresidential construction would support approximately 28,500 jobs..."

Fuller's data was also used by MPR to truth-squad statements from then-gubernatorial candidate Margaret Anderson Kelliher.

The problem is Fuller presented that research on behalf of the Associated General Contractors of America -- the lobbying group for the nation's civil and heavy construction companies, the firms that would benefit directly from the spending.

That doesn't mean he's wrong. But knowing that he's testifying on behalf of thousands of construction firms and advocating for passage of the bill puts the research in a very different light.

Despite a bunch of different government and independent stimulus accountability sites, you'd be hard pressed to find a definitive answer on jobs created / maintained.

What we do have now is reliable data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on construction jobs before the recession and since the federal stimulus was signed. Let's look at that.

Here's a chart showing construction employment in Minnesota (click for a larger view).

(chart comes via Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis)

There were 116,300 Minnesota construction jobs in December 2007, when the recession began , 98,200 jobs in February 2009 when the federal stimulus was signed into law and 91,100 jobs when the recovery officially began four months later in June 2009.

The preliminary estimate for December 2010: 82,700 jobs.

Here's another graph produced by the St. Louis Fed showing construction earnings in Minnesota (click for a larger view)

These are millions of dollars in quarterly earnings. The charts shows a stimulus bump -- a positive -- but then the total earnings resumed their slide.

OK, so let's take a look at BLS data for jobs in heavy and civil construction in Minnesota. That's the category you'd expect to see benefit from those "shovel ready" projects. These are annual averages (the 2010 average uses preliminary data for December 2010).

Yes, there was a bump in 2010 but it's about 1,300 jobs.

I realize this won't end the stimulus / jobs debate.

But if you're looking for evidence that the federal stimulus worked when it came to creating jobs in Minnesota, there's not much to hang your hat on now that we have real job stats to examine.

Yes there was a temporary bump up in earnings, and yes there was a small increase in civil engineering jobs, but neither was sufficient to reverse the fortunes of the construction industry -- the epicenter of the economic downturn.

"It could have been worse" seems to be about the best argument you can make.

Take a look at the data I've put up and tell me where I'm wrong. Better yet, tell us where you've found the best data on the effects of the federal stimulus, or government economic stimulus programs generally.

Post something below or contact me directly at MinnEcon.

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Labor force decline: Is it a guy thing?

Posted at 9:32 PM on February 7, 2011 by Paul Tosto (2 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

Regular MinnEcon readers know we've been writing since the spring about the unprecedented drop in Minnesota's labor force and the long term worries that go with it.

The percentage of working age people here who have a job or are unemployed and seeking a job is at a 22-year low. The portion of the state's working age population that's employed is also to a rate not seen since 1984.

We still don't know exactly why. However, we do know that similar trends can be found at the national level and a new analysis indicates the exodus from the labor force is much more of a guy thing

The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland took on the issue in a report released Monday. The Fed economists didn't explain why people are leaving the labor force in the Great Recession. But they did put some demographics to it.

The first chart shows the spike in people leaving the labor force, a jump not seen in the prior two recessions (click on the charts to get a larger view).

The next Cleveland Fed chart shows men leaving the work force at a much faster pace than women since the start of the recession in late 2007.

The next chart shows white men in the work force by age. There's a significant drop in the percentages of men in their early 20s to mid-30s who were part of the labor force at the start of the recession and, employment-wise, were nowhere to be found in December.

Similar patterns can be seen among black men.

The Fed analysis concludes it has more to do with age than gender:

The lowest U.S. labor participation rate since the mid-1980s is being driven by lower participation across all demographic groups, and especially by those under 29. The biggest exception is older men, whose labor force participation rate has actually increased since the beginning of the recession.

The odd and worrisome thing about these trends -- nationally and for Minnesota -- is that in an improving economy, the opposite should be happening.

Discouraged workers who left the labor force during the worst of the recession are supposed to be re-entering the work force and restarting their job search in better times. Instead, they're on the sidelines.

No doubt some left the work force to go back to college. But the recovery now is officially longer than the recession. In a normal recovery people should be returning to look for work --still unemployed perhaps, but at least looking again.

It's a weird situation. We could very well continue to see the unemployment rate in Minnesota and the nation continue to improve but only because people are leaving the workforce.

Remember, Minnesota's jobless rate fell in December even though the state lost 22,400 jobs during the month.

Take a look at the Cleveland Fed report and tell us what you see in the data. Post something below or contact us directly at MinnEcon.

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Filings for new Minnesota corporations take a dive

Posted at 2:14 PM on February 8, 2011 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

For a while during the recession it looked like we were seeing something surprising -- new businesses start-ups in record numbers in Minnesota despite the lousy economic times.

A broader look at all the data from 2007 to newly available numbers for December 2010, though, show that's not the case. The overall jump in new business filings is an illusion.

Total new business filings jumped in 2009 (see the chart below), making it seem like the ranks of new companies in Minnesota were swelling during the recession.

Much of that growth came in limited liability companies. But it's a statistical aberration. Here's why.

New state rules that kicked in 2009 required many construction tradesmen to register with the state Labor Department and get an Independent Contractor Exemption Certificate.

Instead, it appears many of those tradesman incorporated themselves as limited liability companies.

As the Star Tribune wrote in an excellent piece on the issue:

Many of the construction workers setting up LLCs are legitimate one-person businesses, not employees. With their new corporate-like identity, they don't have to submit paperwork to prove it -- and as an added bonus they avoid a new 2 percent income-tax withholding on payments for their work.

The reality is that filings for new corporations in Minnesota peaked in 2002 and have been falling since, dropping steeply during the Great Recession.

Every new business filing category is flat or down since 2007 with the exception of new limited liability companies, which we can see is not real business growth.

It's been said before: Compared to other states, Minnesota's not that bad off.

But the state needs jobs and they have to come from somewhere. We know now that self-employed numbers took a hit in the first year of the Great Recession. The manufacturing base is coming back but still has a long road back.

We like to hope that a new generation of entrepreneurs is getting ready to help drive the recovery. The business filings data initially held some promise of growth in the recession. It didn't hold up.

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Self-employed taking a hit in the recession

Posted at 4:36 PM on February 3, 2011 by Paul Tosto (1 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

There's a romantic image out there of the guy who loses his job in the recession but then uses the tough times to become his own boss and build his own business.

It's a great image. But the data often mess up the romance.

We learned that lesson again after looking at newly released numbers from the state Department of Employment and Economic Development showing Minnesota lost some 10,000 self-employed businesses in 2008 -- the first year of the Great Recession.

It works out to about a three percent drop following five years of solid growth in what was a hot economy.

Here's a look at the key chart (click on the chart for a larger view).

This is a big deal for a few reasons.

The self-employed make up about 70 percent of the businesses in Minnesota, responsible for about 12 percent of the state's total jobs, DEED reports.

In 10 Minnesota counties, the self-employed were responsible for more than 20 percent of the jobs.

And even with the drop in 2008, the growth in self-employed business has been important to the economic health of small Minnesota counties like Big Stone, where Brent Olson, one of our MinnEcon Economic Lookouts, raised concerns about whether one-man businesses are being shut out of grants and other aid because they're, technically, not creating jobs.

Self-employed short changed in this economy? The view from Big Stone County

If there's good news, it's that the Minneapolis Fed data from last year showed that new businesses in Minnesota were formed at a pretty steady rate regardless of the economy's health.

(Source: Minneapolis Fed)

New business failure rates are also pretty consistent in good times and bad. So maybe when we see the 2009 and 2010 data for self-employed, we'll see things even out a bit.

We hope.

Check out the DEED report and tell us what you're seeing. Post below or contact us directly at MinnEcon.
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Your February economic outlook: Optimism creeping back?

Posted at 1:10 PM on February 2, 2011 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

We cringed a little a few weeks ago when a Minneapolis Fed report boldly proclaimed "Optimism is back" as it released its 2011 economic forecast for the Upper Midwest.

Sounded good until we got to the part about 2011 job growth beating 2010 in all parts of the region except Minnesota. Thanks.

Job growth means everything right now. It's the only way to a broad recovery and prospects seem pretty weak.

So we were surprised to find glimmers of optimism when we reached out recently to Minnesotans in MPR's Public Insight Network to get their household economic outlook for February.

With the official recovery (June 2009 to present) now longer than the official recession (December 2007 to June 2009), we're hearing more from people who've absorbed the economic blows and may be rising slowly to their feet again.

"I expect our situation to improve (in February) because my husband just got some work after being unemployed for over a year," said Teresa Cerling of Wykoff in southern Minnesota.

"I think we may go out to eat a few more times...I expect to start saving again after not saving anything for over a year."

But does the recession feel like it's over in her home? "Not yet," she wrote us. "Even after we start having regular income it's going to feel like catching up for awhile."

Click on the map icons below to read some of the responses we got when we asked how February looked at your house (Click on the box at the upper right hand corner of the map for a full page view; use your "page down" key when reading the responses.)

Add your voice here and we'll add you to the map.

Steve Boland's found steady work and his family's started saving cash that had been going out the door to pay off consumer debt. The St. Paulite described his current financial outlook as bright and sees smooth sailing this month.

"We have savings payments and not debt payments," he said. "Same amount of working money for the house, but boy does that feel like an end to recession."

Savings is one of those crucial barometers of our personal economic health. We didn't do all that great as a society in the go-go years and when the Great Recession hit it looked like our love of leverage had come to an end.

While the Minnesotans we talked to are still in saving mode, there are national signs that we may be going back to our old ways.

Here's a Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis chart showing personal savings rates (click on the chart for a larger view).

Savings was on steady decline during the 1990s and 2000s. We started trying to save like crazy once the recession hit. But the newest data show our savings habits might be short lived.

"My situation will improve, because I will be able to pay off more of my credit card debts," Joe Schaedler of Minneapolis wrote us.

The recession, he said, never hit his home directly because he was able to keep his job through the bad times. But he notes the workloads have doubled and his employer "has postponed hiring staff members for longer than was standard in the past decade."

With a job, he expects his economy to improve. "However, I still have more unemployed friends and acquaintances than at any time in my life ...."
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New credential, new training, same job

Posted at 10:30 AM on January 25, 2011 by Molly Bloom (1 Comments)
Filed under: Greater Minnesota, Jobs & unemployment

Brian Finstad sought retraining after being laid off from his factory job, only to find himself back where he started.

We went down to Springfield, MN to hear his story and to see his work at the Sanborn Manufacturing plant.

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Job growth better in Minnesota than Wisconsin?

Posted at 11:05 AM on January 26, 2011 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

We've been hearing a lot lately about how great Wisconsin is compared to Minnesota when it comes to job growth and employment. Hanging those Open for Business signs at the border was a clever bit of showmanship.

And there's no doubt that Minnesota lawmakers passed the "angel tax credit" last year in part because they worried about companies and jobs slipping across the St. Croix.

But for all the talk about Wisconsin taking Minnesota jobs, the facts show Minnesota's done better than the Badger State in keeping people employed and adding jobs in the recovery.

Charts from a new Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis report bear that out.

The charts show job creation and unemployment rates for states in the Minneapolis Fed district (click on the charts for a larger view)

Minnesota has its problems, no doubt. Job growth went off a cliff in December and the continuing decline in Minnesota's labor force is worrisome.

But the bottom line is that despite the rhetoric about taxes and taking away jobs, Minnesota's beat out Wisconsin with higher job growth and lower unemployment since the recovery officially began.

Take a look at the Fed data and tell us what you see. Post something below or contact us directly at MinnEcon.

_____________________________________

Would you still be clapping if you saw those charts?

Jed Carlson/jcarlson@superiortelegram.com via Duluth News Tribune.

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Construction takes it on the chin

Posted at 12:48 PM on January 21, 2011 by Paul Tosto (1 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

We've written so much about the depth of this recession and the struggles of Minnesotans trying to make it through the hard times, it's hard for us to be stunned by data.

But then we look at the state of Minnesota's construction employment and we're stunned.

For as bad as it's been, the state's monthly unemployment data has brought bits of encouraging news to the state's job markets at some point during the year. But not in construction.

We saw that again Thursday when state unemployment data for December showed construction jobs down 4,700 for 2010, a year over year percentage decline (down 5.7 percent) far worse than any Minnesota sector and much worse than the U.S. construction business (down 2 percent).

Given the recession and the collapse of the housing business, it's no shock that the construction trades are suffering, especially residential construction.

But step back and look at the stats from the 1990s to the go-go days just five years ago to where we are now and it's extraordinary: Five years. Nearly 50,000 Minnesota construction jobs. Gone.

Here are Bureau of Labor Statistics data on employment in the Minnesota construction industry since 1990 (click on the chart for a larger view).

We're struck by a few things in that chart.

Minnesota construction weathered the milder recessions in the early 1990s and early 2000s pretty well, with small dips and quick rebounds that no doubt helped pull the state out of those downturns.

There's no way housing starts or construction will save us this time.

We're basically at the employment level for construction we saw at the end of 1995. So ten years of employment growth in Minnesota was wiped out in the past five.

Nationally, construction employment is down about 25 percent from the start of the recession in December 2007; it's down closer to 30 percent in Minnesota.

As we've noted, markets recover. But how long will it take for construction, overbuilt in the glory days, to come back? What happens to the people who built the Twin Cities but can't afford to live here now?

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Minnesota's jobs picture: Gulp!

Posted at 4:31 PM on January 20, 2011 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

We were hoping the data released today on Minnesota unemployment for December would show we had turned the corner -- that if we didn't see a big drop in unemployment, we'd at least see a jump in new jobs created and an end to the exit of Minnesota's labor force.

Instead, jobs took a cliff dive -- 22,400 fewer jobs in December versus to November, the biggest monthly drop since at least 1990.

Those December losses cut the state's over-the-year job gains nearly in half to 29,300 for 2010.

Meanwhile, the state's total labor force continued to slip. While it was only a few hundred from November to December, some 35,000 Minnesotans have left the labor force since April.

As we've noted before, in a recovering economy, the opposite should be happening -- discouraged workers who left the work force in bad times are supposed to be returning along as opportunities increase.

Here's our updated chart (click on the chart for a larger view)

We've heard various explanations -- people left the the work force to go back to college makes the most sense -- but there's something not right here.

Collectively, the questions really neutralize the down tick in the unemployment rate from 7.1 percent to 7 percent.

They are also delivering a hard reality: It's going to be tougher than expected for Minnesota to recoup the jobs lost in the recession.

State officials in November were predicting it would take until mid-2013 for Minnesota to restore the job numbers lost and noted the state would need to add about 2,000 jobs a month to simply keep pace.

"This slower pace of job creation ... over the next 6 to 12 months will continue to make it very difficult to put the state's unemployed, displaced, and underutilized workers back to work promptly," according to the state economic outlook.

Again, that was in November, before the job gains data for 2010 got nearly halved.

Looking for bright spots, state officials in today's press release highlighted how much manufacturing has come back in the recovery and how important that is.

True, but we're not even close to recovering the manufacturing jobs lost in the recession.

Here's a chart showing employment in Minnesota manufacturing since 1990 (click on the chart for a larger view).

Coincidentally, the Minnesota Home Ownership Center today came out with data showing Minnesota pre-foreclosure notices up 8 percent overall in 2010 but 15 percent in greater Minnesota.

In a brief Twitter discussion, the center noted:

unemployment & underemployment are the #1 reason people fall behind. Foreclosures will decrease with econ recovery.

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MN jobless data: What will this week bring?

Posted at 12:34 PM on January 18, 2011 by Paul Tosto (2 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

Conflicting reports the past few weeks about Minnesota's jobs picture have us more than curious to read Thursday's state unemployment update.

Forbes recently put the Twin Cities as among the best job markets in the country.

At the same time, Minnesota state economists have been cautioning us that it will be mid-2013 before our state recoups the number of jobs lost in the Great Recession.

Thursday's data on Minnesota unemployment for December will give us a better picture of which path we're on.

The widely watched unemployment rate's held fairly steady during the fall at around 7.1 percent.

While that's a lot better than the U.S., there continue to be worrisome signs. Maybe the biggest concern: our steady numbers seem to be less about job creation and more about people leaving the labor force.

We'll be looking for an uptick in the labor force, which has fallen by more than 30,000 since the spring.

We'll also be looking to see if the state added jobs. That's been a roller coaster the past few months.

September data, for instance, saw the state shed nearly 10,000 jobs from the prior month.

A month later, state officials trumpeted a 14,000 October job gain.

In November, though, the state was losing jobs again -- down 5,100 from October.

The state experts say Minnesota needs to produce about 2,000 jobs a month to simply keep pace. They've noted, "this slower pace of job creation ... over the next 6 to 12 months will continue to make it very difficult to put the state's unemployed, displaced, and underutilized workers back to work promptly."

That was from November. We'll get a better sense Thursday of how that forecast is playing out.

Help us get a jump on the data. Tell us what the jobs market is like around you. Seeing signs that things are improving? Post something below or contact us directly at MinnEcon.

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Recession feel like it's over in your home?

Posted at 3:00 PM on January 14, 2011 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Housing & mortgages, Jobs & unemployment, Saving & spending

Back in September, I agreed to help edit and manage MPR's Minnesota Today site until a permanent editor could be found.

It ended up consuming more time than I expected and some things fell through the cracks, including the monthly shout out to MinnEcon readers and Minnesotans in MPR's Public Insight Network seeking stories about life in this economy.

Well, we're back. As of this week, I have both eyes back on MinnEcon.

In coming week's we'll be making some cool changes to the site that will make it a lot easier for you to contribute and share -- not just comment but ask and answer questions, jump onto online forums and find just about everything you need to understand and talk about Minnesota's economy.

The best way to re-start is to resume our regular shout-out: So tell us what the economy looks like for your household in February.

Feeling better about things yet or does it still feel like recession? Are you in saving mode to pay down debts or you feeling like you can spend again on non-essentials? Your stories and insights will make us all smarter about where things are headed across Minnesota.

One of the new questions we included last fall was: Does the recession feel like it's over in your home?

We got a bunch of good responses. A lot of folks are still hurting, though I was surprised to find some Minnesotans who felt only nicked by the Great Recession.

Click on the map icons below to read how some of your neighbors answered: "Does the recession feel like it's over in your home?"

And then add your voice.

Let's start sharing our stories again.

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Twin Cities jobs market looking better than we think?

Posted at 12:30 PM on January 10, 2011 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

When will Minnesota recoup all the jobs lost during the Great Recession? It's largely an educated guessing game at this point.

Some experts believe it will happen this year. We've been taking our cues from Minnesota's very good economists who believe it will be mid-2013 before we see the job numbers restored.

Today, though, there's a new Forbes.com ranking that lists the Twin Cities as as one of the nation's best job markets currently.

While the statewide jobless rate sits at 7.1 percent, the metro area is at 6.5 percent. Forbes writes:

In the Twin Cities area "employment is expected to recover fully by mid-2011, far earlier than nationally," according to a recent Moody's Economy.com analysis of the region.

Look for growth in manufacturing and professional services jobs like accounting. Did we mention that the metro is home to the Mall of America, a retail and tourist destination, which is expanding?

We'll get a better look at Minnesota's picture next week when the state releases unemployment data for December. We're still concerned that the jobless rate looks decent only because tens of thousands of Minnesotans have exited the labor force since April.

Here's a look at the latest, flatter job growth projection by state economists compared to the one in February (Click on the graphic for a larger view).

The Forbes ranking, though, offers some hope that compared to other metro areas in the nation, 2011 may be better than expected for The Cities.

By the way, Washington, D.C. is the best metro area job market currently, according to Forbes. Las Vegas tops the "worst" list with most of California and Florida's major cities close behind.
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Manufacturing business picks up but how about jobs?

Posted at 6:00 PM on January 3, 2011 by Paul Tosto (1 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

Manufacturing is a crucial part of Minnesota's economy, historically one of the main engines of job growth. But we're seeing a split in this recovery between business growth and job creation.

The latest indicator came Monday when Creighton University posted its latest Minnesota index, noting, "Even with healthy economic growth for 2011, the state will not recover the manufacturing jobs lost since the recession began."

That jibes with results from a recent state survey showing 54 percent of manufacturers expecting growth in their business in 2011 compared to 2010, but only 36 percent planning to add jobs and nine percent of those responding expecting to cut jobs this year.

Really, it takes a chart to show how hard Minnesota manufacturing has fallen in the recession and how relatively mild the rebound has been.

Here's a chart showing employment in Minnesota manufacturing since 1990 (click on the chart for a larger view).
The data comes from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The slide the past few years is pretty stunning.

Nearly 40,000 fewer employed in Minnesota manufacturing now compared to December 2007, when the recession officially began. The sector's only added a net 4,000 jobs since June 2009, when the recession officially ended.

A bounce back in manufacturing jobs is crucial to Minnesota. In 2009, the sector was responsible for 14 percent of all the state's employment.

Just a few weeks ago, state officials were highlighting manufacturing as a bright spot with 12,900 jobs added in the past 12 months.

But the reality is 339,000 Minnesotans were working in manufacturing in December 2007. As of November, only 302,000 were employed. It's a long climb back from three years ago.

And we may never get back to 2000, when Minnesota manufacturing employed nearly 400,000.
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What are you seeing in manufacturing? Post below or contact us directly at MinnEcon.

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Farming: The Next Generation

Posted at 2:23 PM on December 23, 2010 by Molly Bloom (2 Comments)
Filed under: Greater Minnesota, Jobs & unemployment

In farm communities around Minnesota, farmers are wondering who will carry on their work after they are gone. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Census of Agriculture, the average age of farmers is rising. In 2007, the average age of farmers in Minnesota was 55.3, up from 49.6 in 1992.

Kristin Wilson, who works with 30 farm families through the Whole Farm Co-op in Long Prairie, said most of the farmers she works with are in their 50s and many do not expect to pass their farms on to offspring. She worries about the future of the state's farms.

"I fear losing the real knowledge of farming the land as our small farmers age out of productivity," said Wilson, the farm co-op's internet sales manager. "Of all the farmers I work with, not one is recommending that their children carry on the work."

David Greenley of Minneapolis grew up in a farming family but was never interested in becoming a farmer and his family didn't encourage it. After serving in the military he earned a college degree and became a public safety officer.

Greenley, 31, is the first in his family to graduate from college. After his grandparents passed away, and his father retired, his cousin took over the farm but now rents out the land.

"It's really hard to continue farming in my generation because it's so expensive," Greenley said.

Many farmers he knows need to have second jobs to make ends meet.

Efforts are underway to prevent the loss of farming culture and to address the issue of rising costs associated with starting a farm. One of these efforts is Farm Beginnings, a project of the Land Stewardship Project designed to help "launch the next generation of farmers" (MPR's Ambar Espinoza reported on the program this summer).

If this program is any indication, the next generation of farmers will not come from those born into it.

Parker Forsell, program organizer in their southeast Minnesota Lewiston office, said only about a third of participants come from family farming backgrounds. The majority of participants either became interested in farming through school or want to start farming as a second career.

Farm Beginnings can train farmers from 40 potential farms each year. Interest has grown every year since it started 14 years ago. For the first time, this year it has a waiting list.

Marie Ljosenvoor is one of the few following in her family's footsteps. The 26-year-old recently moved back to the small Maple Lake dairy goat farm that she grew up on. She's taking over after her father's off-the-farm job was transferred to Chicago. Ljosenvoor will keep her job as a pharmacist, as will her husband, a teacher. Burt they look forward to learning more about farming from nearby farmers.

The Ljosenvoors will also be adding a large vegetable garden they will use to primarily feed themselves. Most of the young farmers Ljosenvoor knows are in similar situations. They started farming primarily to feed themselves and then started selling Community Supported Agriculture shares to support their families.

For them and the other families farming is "not about money and more about stewardship of the land," she said.

Are you a farmer? Thinking about becoming one? Share your story with MinnEcon here.

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No good news on labor force decline

Posted at 3:00 PM on December 20, 2010 by Paul Tosto (1 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

The erosion of Minnesota's labor force continues. We remain at the lowest points in decades when it comes to the percentage of working age Minnesotans in the workforce and the ratio of employed people to population.

Those are facts. The only question right now is whether the worrisome trends we've seen since late spring will continue.

We should be seeing just the opposite trends in a recovering economy.

Even though the latest jobless data showed unemployment holding steady at 7.1 percent for November, it also revealed little positive information on the counts of people employed, unemployed or even looking for work.

The labor force participation rate -- the percentage of working age people who have a job or are unemployed and seeking a job -- slipped to 71.6 percent. The last time that rate was lower? May 1988.

Minnesota labor to population ratio -- the proportion of the state's working age population that is employed -- fell a tick to 66.5 percent in November. The last time that ratio was lower? January 1984.

We've been asking for months: Why isn't the improving economy bringing discouraged workers back into the labor force the way experts expected?

That's the way it's supposed to work -- things get better and all those folks who gave up start trying again and the labor force rises. We've heard various explanations -- people who've gone back to school and are waiting for the job market to need their skills again is the most plausible. But right now it's still speculation.

Here's a look at the graph we've running each month, updated with the November numbers (click on the graph for a larger view).

So a year and a half after the recovery began, the percentage of employment-age population in Minnesota that's actually employed is at its lowest point in 20-plus years and the ratio of people who are employed or seeking a job is at its lowest point in 20-plus years.

The one positive to take away from the November data: a small drop in the number of unemployed Minnesotans. It's a small change, from 209,485 to 208,438, or 1,047 fewer people counted as unemployed in November vs. October.

Given that the number of unemployed people has been rising since June, it's something to see that trend pause.

The numbers, though, reinforce the growing concern that there's still a long way to go in Minnesota to dig out of our jobs hole.

State officials believe we won't recoup all the jobs lost in the recession until mid-2013, noting:

The number of jobs Minnesota employers add to their payrolls is forecast to average just 2,000 a month... in the early part of next year before picking up to over 4,000 by early 2012. Minnesota's labor market needs to produce an estimated 2,000 jobs a month to simply keep pace with population growth and new people entering the workforce.

This slower pace of job creation ... over the next 6 to 12 months will continue to make it very difficult to put the state's unemployed, displaced, and underutilized workers back to work promptly.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis recently announced that the "optimism is back" as it released its 2011 economic forecast for the Upper Midwest.

We got excited about that until we read a little closer and discovered 2011 job growth will beat 2010 numbers in all parts of the region ... except Minnesota.

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In tough job market, consulting finds a niche

Posted at 1:51 PM on December 17, 2010 by Molly Bloom (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment, Small business

We've heard a lot about professions hurting due to the recession, but is it possible that consulting is one of those rare recession-proof fields? According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the consulting industry is expected to be one of the fastest-growing this decade.

Christopher Wright, a Minnetonka-based mechanical engineering consultant for over 20 years, sees the consulting business as counter-cyclical. "When times are good my clients hire my sort of expertise; when times are bad, specialists seem to be laid off in favor of outsourced engineering."

Judith Alnes, a nonprofit management consultant in St. Paul, has also seen business go up during the recession. She writes, "We've seen nonprofits replace their internal accounting services with our accounting services in order to reduce their expenditures. We're also providing nonprofits with strategic services because they need to re-position their organizations for difficult times. We're helping more nonprofits merge, transfer programs and dissolve."

At the same time Alnes and other consultants have had to lower their fees in order to make it affordable for clients who may be hurting.

Lisa Feder, a social media consultant in Minneapolis, has significantly reduced her rates. "Opportunity abounds, but continues to be a tough road with consulting fees significantly reduced. Overall revenue and marketing budgets continue to be reduced and that seems to transfer over to the consulting world."

Independent consultants seem to be feeling the pain less than larger consulting firms, many of whom have had to layoff staff. Even so, consulting may be an early indicator of an improving economy.

Some firms, like Cynthia Smith-Strack's Arlington, Minn., economic development firm that had to cut staff hours at the height of the recession are now seeing an uptick in business again. In June the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development found that 74 percent of business service firms (that includes consultants), were expecting increasing or stable sales over the next year.

Ramon Riba, a structural engineering consultant in Rochester, thinks that the consulting field might be growing because the jobs employers have shed in the recession are not coming back.

"The fact is with so many layoffs and the huge sucking sound made by all the now professional jobs fleeing to China, India, etc., consulting may be the only realistic solution for many," Riba says.

Is your workplace hiring? Are you seeing other signs of a recovery? Share your story with MinnEcon here.

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Minnesota's jobs picture: Could be worse?

Posted at 5:36 PM on December 9, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

We've been agonizing in recent posts about the worrisome trends in Minnesota's labor data and the fact that we won't recoup all the jobs lost in this recession until mid-2013.

In true Minnesota fashion, however, we'd like to note: It could be worse.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis has been keeping records during this recession of employment decline by state and comparing them to past recessions. The Fed keeps great, geeky data and you can find it here.

Searching for silver linings, we compared the two worst post-WWII recessions: 1980 and, yes, the one we're in now. Here's the Fed's chart for changes in employment in Minnesota during those two recessions (click on the chart for a larger view).

Many of us (OK, me) remember how lousy things were in 1980 and 1981. The chart confirms it took longer for Minnesota's job market to hit bottom in 1980 than now.

It's true our employment picture seems stubbornly stuck in neutral lately. October jobless numbers showed a 7.1 percent unemployment rate here, an uptick from September.

We're hoping for better numbers next week when the state releases November data.

Until, then, maybe there's some small solace in the fact that we've been here before and things do get better.

Check out the Minneapolis Fed data . If you see anything that gives you hope or dread, we want to hear about it.

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What's your January economic forecast?

Posted at 5:00 PM on December 6, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment, Saving & spending

What's next month look like for you?

We're now at the three year anniversary of the recession beginning, a year and a half since the recovery was supposed to have begun.

So we want to know: Are you feeling it?

Back in late August, we got lots of responses that convinced us that our love of leverage had come to an end, that people were shifting back to savings and away from spending and that the change might be permanent.

Later, we added the question: Does the recession feel like it's over in your home?

We got some indications that maybe economic conditions were starting to ease, at least for those Minnesotans who had jobs.

That seems to be the tipping point right now. If you have work, things are looking better. If you don't, hope can be hard to come by.

We learned last week that it will likely be two-plus more years before Minnesota completely restores the number of jobs it lost in the recession.

Take your economic pulse and help our reporting on the economy. Let us know what you're seeing and if January looks better than you stand right now.

Post something below or take five minutes and use our form.

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Temp work, permanent anxiety

Posted at 12:10 PM on December 3, 2010 by Molly Bloom (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

Since the economic downturn started we've been checking in with sources in our Public Insight Network who are looking for work. We asked them earlier this week how things are going and learned that many remain jobless. But about an equal number have now found work.

The problem is most of those jobs are temporary or contract jobs without benefits. Workers who land them still face uncertainty and continued job hunting.

Sallie Malmstrom of Eden Prairie, who we talked to last year around this time, has finally found a job after 18 months of looking after being laid off after 20 years in the manufacturing/engineering field.

"I went back to school/training provided by the workforce center," she wrote. "It helped me be able to get the job that I started this week."

The temporary position will only last about two months and is not enough to get her family's finances back on track.

"My husband and I ended up filing for chapter 7 bankruptcy last week and we know we will still be losing our house despite it being on the market since April 2010," Malmstrom wrote.

Christopher Johnson of Wayzata has also found work - through May:

I have a contract position with a local multi-channel retailer as an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system implementation consultant. In plain English that means I help the company setup and use a new system for managing their financials and operations. My contract ends in May. A recruiter contacted me after finding my resume on a specialty website. As a contractor, I am paid an hourly rate, and have to manage my own health insurance and savings. As the end of the contract nears, I will begin looking for the next opportunity.

Sara Cheever, Eden Prairie, has been employed since April, but she still has many doubts about the future:

My last full-time position was eliminated in November 2008. I was unemployed until May 2009, when I was able to obtain an internship because I was getting my Master's degree in Human Resources. My internship ended in April 2010 and since then, I have been fortunate enough to find two temporary positions, which have kept me continously employed since then. My search for a full-time position has been demoralizing. I have over seven years of experience and a Master's degree (both in my chosen field) and interviews are few and far between. I doubt myself and my chosen career path constantly.

The rise in temporary jobs is a trend we've been tracking for a while. Last month, the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development reported that temporary jobs had returned to pre-recession levels. But given the lack of benefits and security in these positions, what does their growth mean for our workforce and our economy?

Are you looking for work? Have you found a job recently? We want to hear your story: share it here.

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Minnesota's jobs recovery? Two-plus years away

Posted at 4:22 PM on December 2, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

OK, the good news is that Minnesota continues to do better than the nation when it comes to unemployment and regaining the jobs lost in the Great Recession.

End good news here.

New budget and economic forecasts released today by Minnesota state officials put numbers to what many Minnesotans in MPR's Public Insight Network have been telling us all year: a slower than expected jobs recovery, glimmers of hope but otherwise a frustrating slog.

This is not the job-creating recovery we've come to expect after recessions.

Here's a look at the newest, flatter job growth projection compared to the one in February (Click on the graphic for a larger view).

Here's the bad news lifted from the report in edited chunks.

Until there are clearer signs of a self-sustaining expansion...employers will remain cautious about further hiring decisions and Minnesotans will remain stressed with severe unemployment ... stubbornly high concentrations of home foreclosures, high debt burdens, and depleted wealth.

Without a noticeable improvement in the national employment picture... it is unlikely Minnesota will be able to sustain its current pace of job creation in 2011. In the November 2010 forecast, labor market conditions will continue to improve into 2011, but more slowly than forecast in February.

Employment growth is expected to slow in the first part of the year ... as consumers continue to repair household finances and the housing market inches toward recovery. The November forecast estimates that it will take until mid-2013 before Minnesota employment returns to peak pre-recession levels.

The number of jobs Minnesota employers add to their payrolls is forecast to
average just 2,000 a month... in the early part of next year before picking up to over 4,000 by early 2012. Minnesota's labor market needs to produce an estimated 2,000 jobs a month to simply keep pace with population growth and new people entering the workforce.

This slower pace of job creation ... over the next 6 to 12 months will continue to make it very difficult to put the state's unemployed, displaced, and underutilized workers back to work promptly.

Yes, it isn't all bad news.

The forecast notes that Minnesota's regained a third of the 162,200 jobs lost at the lowest point of the recession and that fewer people are seeking jobless aid for the first time or collecting unemployment.

Still, this month marks the third year since the Great Recession began. It's a year and a half since the recovery officially began.

Just a couple months ago, one expert was predicting that Minnesota would be back to pre-recession employment levels by the end of next year.

Meanwhile, there are continued worrisome trends linger in the state's labor force data.

Take a look through the newest state data and tell us what you see. Post below or contact us directly at MinnEcon.

Right now, it looks like an economy where things will be on the upswing if you're employed. If you're not, the hard journey the recession set in motion three years ago isn't close to over.
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Worrisome trends linger in Minn. labor data

Posted at 3:00 PM on November 23, 2010 by Paul Tosto (2 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

Minnesota employment data continues to show some confusing stuff about our state's labor force -- trends that should keep us concerned about the strength of our economy despite the "recovery."

Steep drops in the labor force since April don't fit at all with the idea that we're in a recovery. Nearly 34,000 Minnesotans have left the state's labor force (sum of the employed plus the unemployed) since April.

After a slight uptick in September, the newest data show the labor force down again in October.

Meanwhile, the labor force participation rate -- the percentage of working age people who have a job or are unemployed and seeking a job -- slipped to 71.7 percent. The last time that rate was lower? June 1988.

Here's another one: Minnesota labor to population ratio -- the proportion of the state's working age population that is employed -- fell a tick to 66.6 percent in October. The last time that ratio was lower? January 1984.

The crucial question we've been asking for months: Why isn't the improving economy bringing discouraged workers back into the labor force the way experts expected?

That's the way it's supposed to work -- things get better and all those folks who gave up start trying again and the labor force rises. We've heard various explanations -- people who've gone back to school and are waiting for the job market to need their skills again is the most plausible. But right now it's still speculation.

Here's the chart on Minnesota's labor force we've been updating the past few months. (Click on the charts for a larger view.)

We're told that Minnesota is adding jobs and that's encouraging. Yet, the count of unemployed people in Minnesota has been rising since June.

So while we are supposed to be in a recovery in Minnesota, we see:

-- the percentage of employment-age population that's actually employed is at its lowest point in 20-plus years,
-- the ratio of people who are employed or seeking a job is at its lowest point in 20-plus years;
-- after a year of nearly steady improvement, the number of unemployed has been rising through the fall.

I'm not trying to be a downer. I'm trying to understand why the data runs counter to the idea that things are improving. Is it a lag time issue? Will we be laughing about this in a few months? Or is there some fundamental shift in employment trends we haven't yet recognized?

Post your thoughts below or contact us directly at MinnEcon.

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Not moving to South Dakota

Posted at 10:57 AM on November 18, 2010 by Paul Tosto (3 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

I'm running double duty these days, writing MinnEcon and temporarily editing MPR's Minnesota Today page.

That job involves posting interesting stories from around Minnesota and I found one that deserves some space here.

The Marshall Independent reports that Marshall-based livestock feed maker Ralco Nutrition will expand operations in town, building a new mixing facility and warehouse.

What caught my eye was the quote from a Ralco exec that the company looked at South Dakota, with its cheap land and business-friendly tax structure, and decided they were better off here.

Doug Wing, Ralco vice president of operations, said the company was considering the option of expanding in South Dakota and other communities, but decided on local expansion instead.

"Ralco is committed to building rural communities and sustaining the agricultural way of life,"Wing said. "While we weighed options for expansion in South Dakota as well as other communities, we ultimately determined that expanding here would be in our best interest.

It's a compelling point given that South Dakota was made to look like employment Shangri-La during the Minnesota governor election.

Republican Tom Emmer's "Don't lose another job to South Dakota" campaign had many people wondering just how much South Dakota was eating our employment lunch.

Yes, there's no question South Dakota is more tax friendly. One group lauds South Dakota's tax climate as the nation's most business friendly and scorns Minnesota's as among the worst.

The belief, though, that there's an exodus of Minnesota businesses and jobs remains on shaky ground.

Anyone have first-hand experience losing a job to South Dakota? Drop me a line.

MPR Photo/Tom Weber

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Green job hype? Pipestone wind turbine plant idled

Posted at 9:21 PM on November 1, 2010 by Paul Tosto (14 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

We made a big deal a couple weeks ago about an in-depth analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis throwing cold water on the idea that "green jobs" will drive the new economy.

Among its points the Fed waived off a Minnesota 2020 report claiming that if done right, the wind industry "can create thousands of jobs, [and] revive the economic base of many Minnesota communities hit hard by the recession."

It doesn't work that way, Fed writer Ron Wirtz wrote: "As a job creator, wind power doesn't pack much punch...."

Xcel Energy has the most wind-generated power of any utility in the country, yet "it's really hard to quantify" the effect of the green movement specifically on company employment, said Beth Chacone, environmental policy manager for Xcel. "I know [the green economy] gets a lot of press, but we're not sure there is job creation."

The Fed's analysis became all too real tonight.

The Star Tribune reports that wind-turbine maker Suzlon Group is laying off its remaining 110 workers at its Pipestone plant "because the once-booming U.S. wind energy market has lost headway."

Last week, the American Wind Energy Association acknowledged last quarter was the worst since 2007 for wind energy installations. "Year-to-date installations stood at 1,634 MW, down 72 percent versus 2009, and the lowest level since 2006. In 2010, wind projects in the U.S. are being installed at half the rate as in Europe, and a third of the rate as in China."

If the economy is recovering and green jobs and clean energy are our future, then a turbine plant in Pipestone ought to be adding jobs. Instead, the plant is idled.

As we noted after reading the Fed analysis, Minnesota policy makers need to take a serious look at the Green Jobs push. Money's getting spent to retrain people hurt in the recession for jobs that sound great but might not be there.

Yet, the competition among cities and states to spend money to attract green jobs is picking up speed. The Twin Cities "Thinc.GreenMSP" effort is "an unprecedented economic-development partnership between the two cities to retain, grow and attract green-manufacturing businesses and jobs" in the metro area.

The shutdown of a southwest Minnesota wind turbine plant and the Minneapolis Fed's analysis ought to force a serious discussion about whether the Green Jobs promise is worth the hype.

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Your career. What happened? Newest stories

Posted at 2:30 PM on November 1, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

Starting over. That's what we're hearing these days from Minnesotans and others in MPR's Public Insight Network.

We asked folks recently to describe in just six words what the economy's done to their careers. (Add your voice here.)

The latest batch of stories show some folks are rolling the dice in he turmoil, starting new businesses and jumping into self-employment for the first time. Others are still trying to revive their careers after getting rolled it the Great Recession.

Business disappeared. Employees laid off. Starting over at 61.

That's how Ed Meijer of St. Augusta summed up his experience in this downturn.

"I was very busy bidding jobs nationally until July 4th, 2007. After that date all work disappeared," said Meijer, who consults and designs fire protection systems.

We continued working on a couple of very large jobs until May 2008 after which date I had to lay off most employees eventually working by myself without pay (still paying the banks, IRS etc).

I am still not back on the payroll and cannot collect unemployment. I have become busier and right now have a hard time keeping up with the (mostly government)work. I now have one designer and a part-time secretary on the payroll.

We got stories from Minnesota and around the country. See the responses on the map below (click on the map for a larger view then zoom out to see responses from outside the state).

Regular MinnEcon readers know we've been particularly interested in folks willing to take the entrepreneurial leap in a recession.

So Jesse Gilmore's words grabbed us instantly: Leap of Faith. My Own Business.

Working as a server Gilmore said, was delivering money but not happiness. So he put his career chips on an arts business he's co-founded, The North Coast Collective, and is building websites for local artists.

I had to take a leap of faith with the business I had been working on for almost 4 years (without much start up capital or promise of an income anytime in the near future). Started full time school to finish up my degree at Minneapolis Community & Technical College before transferring over to the University of Minnesota next fall.

Student loans are helping me live at poverty level until this business starts to make enough money to supplement my income.

The state's jobless rate is steady at 7 percent, far lower than the nation. September data, however, also showed another drop in jobs -- down nearly 10,000 from August.

So like the rest of the country, Minnesotans are still waiting for something to ignite serious job growth. Creighton's University's newest Minnesota analysis today is projecting "very modest job gains" in the months ahead.

That's why stories like the one Stacy Baldus continue to keep us worried about the state's future. We've written over the past year about ongoing concerns the recession is chasing away Minnesota's future, forcing new grads to go elsewhere for work. In her case, that's Bottineau, ND.

"Having graduated in December of 2008, I worked as a substitute teacher for a year until I found a job (not related to my masters' degree) in North Dakota," Baldus wrote. "I moved, took a low paying job, and am not doing what I love. But I have an apartment, a job, and health insurance. For now, I'm surviving while missing my native Minnesota."

Her six word summary should have us all wringing our hands a bit: Found job in ND, miss MN.

BONUS: Check out the responses we got in the spring to our six-word career challenge.

NOTE: Our efforts were inspired by SMITH Magazine's ongoing Six-Word Memoir project.

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Rebound in the state's labor force? Not yet

Posted at 2:19 PM on October 25, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

We've been watching an unprecedented slide in Minnesota's labor force since the spring, waiting for the turnaround.

Steep drops in the labor force since April don't fit at all with the idea that we're in a recovery. Some 32,217 Minnesotans left the state's labor force (sum of the employed plus the unemployed) between April and August.

New data for September show a barely perceptible uptick in the labor force -- 383 Minnesotans.

So the labor force is still down by nearly 32,000 from the spring and the labor force participation rate -- the percentage of working age people who have a job or are unemployed and seeking a job -- stayed at 71.8 percent, the same as August and a rate not seen here since December 1988.

The crucial question we've been asking: Why isn't the improving economy bringing discouraged workers back into the labor force the way experts expected?

That's the way it's supposed to work -- things get better and all those folks who gave up start trying again.

Here are the updated charts on Minnesota's labor force and on the monthly labor force changes. Click on the charts for a larger view

We'll keep watching.

Among the best guesses as to what's happening -- displaced Minnesotans left the labor for and signed up for college in big numbers. Enrollment in the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system hit another record this fall.

The bottom line question, though, still stands: If we're in a recovery, why isn't the labor force growing?

This Great Recession is denting a lot of our conventional wisdom about downturns and recoveries. Is the state's labor force drop signaling some problem in the Minnesota economy we haven't yet discovered?

As always, take a look at the data and tell us what you're seeing. Post below or contact us directly at MinnEcon.

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Your career. What happened? Last chance

Posted at 8:44 AM on October 22, 2010 by Paul Tosto (1 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

We've been getting solid responses to our question: Tell us what the Great Recession's done to your career -- in only six words.

We'll feature the responses in a post next week. We need to hear from you.

Data released Thursday show Minnesota's jobless rate stuck at seven percent
with the state down nearly 10,000 jobs from August. We know from the numbers it probably isn't feeling like a recovery to a lot of people. What's happening to you?

Post your six word career story below or use our handy form.

Looking for inspiration? Check out the responses we got last spring on MPR's Facebook page

NOTE: Our efforts were inspired by SMITH Magazine's ongoing Six-Word Memoir project.

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When will the labor force return?

Posted at 7:00 AM on October 21, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

We've been watching a weird phenomenon the past few months, a steep drop in Minnesota's labor force through the spring and summer. We'll know later today if it's continuing when the state releases updated labor force data along with the September unemployment rate.

Some 32,217 Minnesotans left the state's labor force (sum of the employed plus the unemployed) between April and August. There are guesses why, but no one good explanation.

The crucial question we've been asking: Why isn't the improving economy bringing discouraged workers back into the labor force the way experts expected?

That's the way it's supposed to work -- things get better and all those folks who gave up start trying again.

"The jobless may be going back to school, retiring early or taking care of family until the labor market creates opportunities that use their skills and match their reservation wage." Kyle Uphoff, a state labor analyst, told us last month.

The school explanation makes sense. Enrollment in the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system hit another record this fall.

The thing is, we've always believed that when the job opportunities return, the people will, too. Right now, that's not the case.

Minnesota's labor force participation rate -- the percentage of working age people who have a job or are unemployed and seeking a job -- slipped to 71.8 percent in August. We haven't see a rate that low here since December 1988.

Will September data show the state labor force is finally growing again?

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Green Economy: Hope or Hype?

Posted at 1:45 PM on October 19, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

My colleague Mike Caputo today picked up on our Monday MinnEcon post on "Green Jobs" hype and is trying to get a conversation started on it.

Please jump in. Mike runs a great space on MPR's Minnesota Today page with lots of room for good, interactive discussion.

Mike makes a really good point that whooshed over my head until he mentioned it:

It's not just public officials who see the hope in the "green economy." Many business and thought leaders see potential too, such as Lois Quam, former executive at UnitedHealthGroup, and founder of Tysvar, a Minnesota-based business looking to spur on the green economy.

Quam says the U.S. and Minnesota are in the game, but policy and innovation need to keep apace, since global giants like China are moving to capitalize on the green jobs.

Quam is coming to MPR for its next Bright Ideas forum (it's a free deal that happen on October 26 at 7 p.m., just reserve a seat or two).

Part of the challenge here is trying to figure out what qualifies as as green job. The Minneapolis Fed analysis I wrote about Monday makes it clear that definitions can be stretched to creative limits.

But maybe that's OK. One of our readers noted that "green jobs" extend beyond solar panels and wind turbines -- the folks who work the Port of Duluth importing the materials that build the turbines ought to be counted as benefiting from the Green Energy push, no?

Mike asks: What would you ask someone like Quam to convince you that the green economy has promise? What role should the public and private sectors in Minnesota play in the green economy?

Share some thoughts and talk it through in person next week.

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Green jobs: Don't buy the hype?

Posted at 3:23 PM on October 18, 2010 by Paul Tosto (4 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

"Green jobs" is often a quick answer to the question of Minnesota's employment future. It's what everyone wants. State officials are starting to count green job growth and it's a high priority for Twin Cities mayors.

But if you've been giddy about green jobs driving the new economy, a new Minneapolis Fed analysis will sober you up fast.

Yes, leave it to the guys at the Fed to detail why your conventional wisdom about green jobs and the future is wrong.

Below are the highlights from the Fed report.If you're a visual learner here's the way the Fed sees it.

That would be a green balloon about to be pierced by a sharp instrument.

The Fed, for instance, knows there's love for wind turbines on the windy plains and notes a Minnesota 2020 report claiming that if done right, the wind industry "can create thousands of jobs, [and] revive the economic base of many Minnesota communities hit hard by the recession."

But, says Fed writer Ron Wirtz, "There's just one little annoyance: As a job creator, wind power doesn't pack much punch...."

Xcel Energy has the most wind-generated power of any utility in the country, yet "it's really hard to quantify" the effect of the green movement specifically on company employment, said Beth Chacone, environmental policy manager for Xcel. "I know [the green economy] gets a lot of press, but we're not sure there is job creation."

Even the generally upbeat folks at the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development aren't sanguine about green jobs driving the state's future.

State labor market analyst Steve Hine tells the Fed:

...green jobs appear to be the latest in a long line of economic silver bullets -- new sectors with clear promise that got exaggerated beyond their real potential.

"Ten years ago, high-tech was the ticket to never-ending economic growth," said Hine. Health care, biotech and telecom have also had a turn. These have been important economic developments, but they also have limits.

The enthusiasm for green "is not a new thing," he said. "It's a grasp for the next new thing."

If you're still thinking about green as an employment salvation, the report also details the, er, creative art of defining a green job. It's not pretty.

"Measurement idiosyncrasies," says Wirtz, "suggest that bold estimates for new green jobs have a methodological thumb on the scale.

"Add it all up, and those hoping for a green makeover might be disappointed if they are expecting a sea change in how the broader economy looks and acts."

It's a terrific analysis. Reporters love puncturing conventional wisdom, so I'm compelled to stand back and applaud the Fed's methods and detail.

It's an important message policy makers and others need to hear. Money's getting spent to retrain people hurt in the recession for "green jobs".

The competition among cities and states to spend money to attract green jobs is picking up speed. The Twin Cities "Thinc.GreenMSP" effort is "an unprecedented economic-development partnership between the two cities to retain, grow and attract green-manufacturing businesses and jobs" in the metro area.

The Minneapolis Fed's analysis ought to force us all to ask if the Green Jobs promise is worth the hype.

Take a look at the Fed research and listen to Wirtz in the video below. Then post below or drop us a line directly and tell us what you're seeing when it comes to green jobs in Minnesota.

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Your career. What happened? Six words

Posted at 1:21 PM on October 12, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

Back in April, we asked a simple question: Tell us what the Great Recession's done to your career -- but do it in only six words.

We got great, creative responses to that six-word challenge. With Minnesota's latest jobless data set for release next week, we wanted to hear from you again.

We were genuinely impressed by the thoughtful and heartfelt responses we got back in the spring, although some of them were hard to read.

Charles Oakes of Willmar told us he had to lay off staff and cut budgets at a program he runs that finds jobs for adults with disabilities. He summed up his experience in six-plus words: Nonprofit leader, hatchet man now. Woe is us...

We're going to follow up with Oakes to see how he's doing.

Click on the map icons to read stories from April on the recession's effect on the professional lives of your friends and neighbors. Then add your story.

Here are my six words: Journalism reaper. Step ahead. So far.

That pretty much sums up my professional life the past two-plus years -- happy and lucky to have a job writing and reporting and hoping it stays that way.

How about you? What words best describe what's happened to your career in this recession? Unemployed? New entrepreneur? Back to school to retrain?

Post your six word career story below or use our handy form.

We'll feature the responses in an upcoming post. We need to hear from you.

BONUS: Check out the responses we got last spring on MPR's Facebook page

NOTE: Our efforts were inspired by SMITH Magazine's ongoing Six-Word Memoir project.

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Worker burnout? Tell us about it

Posted at 4:42 PM on October 7, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

My colleagues at Marketplace Radio this week are asking their national audience a question that we'd love to localize in Minnesota:

Is your employer doing anything to help avoid worker burnout?

We've heard plenty of stories from Minnesotans in our Network of workers shouldering more of the burden at work as colleagues are laid off and jobs are cut.

What's your boss or company doing to stop it? We're in a recovery, right? Seeing any signs that your workload is lessening or that management is trying to return to "normal" times with hours and work?

You can help Marketplace and MinnEcon by telling us what you see.

Use this link.

The Marketplace reporters want a national view for their story. But we'll be watching out for Minnesotans who respond.

Share a story.

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Minnesota's job levels restored by end of 2011. Really?

Posted at 3:09 PM on October 4, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

There's lot of educated guessing in economics and not a lot of time spent looking back to see if those guesses were right.

I'm reminded of that after looking at the latest Creighton University Economic Outlook for Minnesota.

The September report notes recent declines in the Minnesota index but is generally positive. Creighton economist Ernie Goss says:

"During the official national recession, Minnesota lost almost 130,000 jobs. Since the recession officially ended in June 2009, the state has recovered almost 20,000 of the lost jobs.

In terms of jobs, I expect the state to return to pre-recession levels of employment by the end of 2011."

That's pretty encouraging. Except, in May he predicted it would take until September 2013 to restore job numbers.

Minnesota's economy has begun adding jobs. Since the beginning of the recession, Minnesota has lost more than 125,000 jobs.

Based on the latest state job data and Minnesota's recovery from the 2001 recession, I not expect the state to fully restore these jobs until September 2013.

I remembered the 2013 prediction because I posted on it.

There's been marginal improvement in the overall state economy since May but the employment picture hasn't really improved at all.

We won't learn September's data until numbers are released Oct 21 but it's mind-boggling to think we'll see an upswing sufficient to recoup by the end of 2011 all the jobs lost.

I emailed Goss about the big swing in his prediction on how fast Minnesota will restore jobs lost and got this response:

The turnaround is just a bit stronger than I anticipated. Minnesota has been adding jobs at a somewhat higher pace than I initially expected.

However if Congress and the Administration fail to head off the massive tax increase slated to go into effect on January 1, 2011, I will adjust my outlook downward.

I've emailed Goss again to get some clarity on his analysis.

Meanwhile, I'll take my cue from Dave Senf, labor market analyst for the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.

In a recent piece -- "The Great Recession lives up to its name" -- Senf looks back at the early 1980s recession and writes:

The unemployment rate after that recession remained above its pre-recession level until the middle of 1986, five years after the recession started and 3½ years after peaking.

Even if economic growth exceeds expectations, Minnesota's unemployment rate may take longer to improve than in the past. Today's job market, while gradually improving, is in worse shape than 30 years ago, even though both recessions had a 6.8 percent unemployment rate one year after peaking

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My recession worse than your recession? Maybe not

Posted at 2:35 PM on September 30, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

I made a pretty good case last year that the early 1980s recession (mine) was worse than the current downturn, but pulled back on that a couple weeks ago when the official word came that this recession is longer than the '80s.

Today, I retreat again.

Newly released research from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development has me convinced that while the state's jobless rate was bad in the early '80s, the overall labor picture in the Great Recession is worse.

Comparing key labor market indicators from the '80s and today, the report concludes, "today's job market, while on the rebound, is weaker than the job market rebound 30 years ago.The labor force expanded faster 30 years ago as stronger job growth drew workers into the labor force."

The reports graphics tell the tale (click on each to get a larger view). The unemployment rate was worse in the last Great Recession:

But the larger labor market conditions bottomed out and bounced back much faster then than today:

And there's no doubt it's been worse the past two years when it comes to initial unemployment claims. "Initial claims doubled during the Great Recession and are still 25 percent higher than pre-recession levels," the report says.

The spike in initial claims three decades ago was smaller, occurred quicker, and faded faster. A higher rate of hiring and a lower rate of layoffs in the 1981-82 recession produced a more robust job recovery than today.

The graph showing the current drop off in the labor force has me particularly vexed.

At MinnEcon, we've reported on the sharp, sudden drop in the state's labor force since April.

Why isn't the improving economy bringing discouraged workers back into the labor force the way experts expected? That's the way it's supposed to work -- things get better and all those folks who gave up start trying again.

We can't answer that yet. But it's worrisome.

Not only has the labor market here been worse than in the early 1980s (I now concede), but the "recovery" is not following the paths we've come to expect coming out of recessions.

To paraphrase the mutual fund industry, past performance is no longer a predictor of future success. Scary.

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Got a different view on the job market? Post below or contact us directly at MinnEcon and tell us what you're seeing.

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Minnesota's labor force: The exit continues

Posted at 2:05 PM on September 22, 2010 by Paul Tosto (2 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

Suppose the entire population of Winona disappeared over five months. We'd notice. And we'd ask, what's going on?

Winona's still there. But 32,217 Minnesotans left the state's labor force (sum of the employed plus the unemployed) between April and August. There are guesses why, but no one good explanation. August data show another drop -- not nearly the cliff dive we saw in June and July, but still down.

The crucial question we've been asking: Why isn't the improving economy bringing discouraged workers back into the labor force the way experts expected? That's the way it's supposed to work -- things get better and all those folks who gave up start trying again.

We know the number of state job vacancies is jumping. So where are the workers to fill them?

Minnesota's August labor force participation rate -- the percentage of working age people who have a job or are unemployed and seeking a job -- slipped to 71.8 percent. We haven't see a rate that low here since December 1988.

Online, state seasonally adjusted labor force data go back to 1976. There's never been a drop even close to what we've seen since April. (Click on the chart below for a larger view.)

"There is certainly no single obvious reason for the decline. We can really only speculate at this point," said Kyle Uphoff, assistant labor market information director with Minnesota's Department of Employment and Economic Development.

The reduction in workforce participation obviously runs contrary to what we might expect- people are dropping out of the labor force at the same time that opportunities are being created.

One possibility is that there is a mismatch between the skills of the unemployed and the skills required in new jobs.

At our worst point in the recession, the state had lost 50,200 manufacturing jobs. We have gained back only 10,600 of those jobs. We have also lost 34,200 construction jobs -- a bleed which is still continuing.

It is possible that those who have lost jobs in those industries (or others) have simply given up looking for employment if there are no specific job openings requiring their skills. Lacking specific skills to transition to other industries or occupations, such groups may drop out of the labor force.

The alternative explanation, he added, may be more simple.

"The jobless may be going back to school, retiring early or taking care of family until the labor market creates opportunities that use their skills and match their reservation wage."

Why is this a big deal? Towns aren't disappearing and people aren't being kidnapped. But Minnesota's economic success has always been a draw. We don't really expect people to leave Minnesota to look for opportunity.

But that's no longer the case. We've highlighted the ongoing struggles of young adults in the Great Recession and Minnesota's ability to keep its young talent in state.

Tuesday's terrific MPR story on the boom and bust in Isanti County is stunning -- people in the construction trades who built the Twin Cities but can't afford to live here now.

The family recently decided to give up on Minnesota. They're selling everything they can, and next week they will get in their car and head to New Mexico.

Yes, it's just one family. And if the labor force swings back around by year's end, our hand-wringing will be forgotten quickly.

State experts, though, have been worried for more than a year about the future health of Minnesota's economy given what's already projected to be a slow growth, aging workforce.

We've always believed that when the job opportunities return, the people will, too. Right now, that's not the case.

The absolute worst scenario coming out of a recession this bad would be a Minnesota economy where the jobs are here but the people are not.

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See something different from what we see? What's the job market look like around you? Post below or contact us directly.

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OK, my recession was NOT longer than your recession

Posted at 12:30 PM on September 20, 2010 by Paul Tosto (1 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment, Saving & spending

I made a pretty good case last year that the early 1980s recession was worse than the current downturn. But as of today I can no longer complain that my recession was longer.

The official word came this morning -- this Great Recession lasted 18 months, from December 2007 to June 2009. The '81-'82 recession and '73-'75 recession held the prior record for post-WW II recessions at 16 months.

I'm still not ready to give up the idea that things were tougher in the early '80s. Why?

Unemployment was worse. The U.S. unemployment rate topped 9 percent for 18 months. The unemployment rate topped 9 percent in May 2009 and needs to stay that high through November to match the bad old '80s. It's been holding at 9.6 percent in July and August.

Here's a U.S. unemployment graphic from the St. Louis Fed. There's no doubt unemployment is bad in this downturn, but we'll see how it ends up looking compared to the bad old days that started in the late '70s.

Mortgage rates. Inflation was brutal way back then and we all paid a price.

If you're a potential homeowner in 2010, your interest rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage averaged 4.43 percent in August.

We're not sure what that rate will average this month. But we're pretty confident it will come in better than September 1981 -- when you would have paid a rate of 18.16 percent on a mortgage.

Economic activity? Well, this one's a little tougher. Here's a chart of quarterly, seasonally adjusted changes in GDP, inflation adjusted, from the first quarter 1979 to second quarter 2010.

OK, that's a pretty dramatic nose dive in the value of goods and services produced in this country during this recession. But look at those crazy drops in the early 1980s.

I'm going to hold out until December. That's when we'll know the November jobless data. If the unemployment rate is still tracking above 9 percent, it'll be worse (or at least a tie for worst).

Take a look at the data from the 80s and now and share your insights. Which recession is worse?

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MN jobless rate edges up to 7 percent: Quick hits

Posted at 9:24 AM on September 16, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

Here's this morning's press release from the Department of Employment and Economic Development.

I'm trolling through it now. A few thoughts:

-- Minnesota construction jobs continue to get hammered, down 2,500 in August; down 8,100 from the same time a year ago and falling much faster compared to the construction sector nationally.

We noted earlier this week the hit construction jobs have taken during the recession.

This chart from the Minnesota Housing Partnership focuses only on residential building jobs, but it's pretty telling about the construction business generally.

Right now, there's not much hope for that trend line and all the people it represents.

-- Manufacturing continues to recover slowly. It lost 200 jobs in August but is up 5,600 from last year. Still, it's a long climb back from the glory days before the recession.

-- Only five of the state's 11 sectors added jobs in August. Professional and business services grew by 4,900 jobs but administrative and support services, which includes temporary help, accounted for most of the growth in this sector.

Experts typically view temp job growth as a positive leading indicator. But we've been seeing that for several months now and wonder when temp jobs will turn into permanent ones.

-- DEED identified 488 green jobs open in the state during the fourth quarter of 2009, most in environmental cleanup, education, regulation, renewable energy and sustainable agriculture.

See anything that jumps out at you in the data?

Drop us a line.

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Grandparents filling the economic breach

Posted at 12:20 PM on September 10, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

Of all the changes wrought by the Great Recession the past two-plus years, we don't talk nearly enough about how the lousy economy is altering our family structures.

We've taken a run at some of that, looking at how the economy has driven young adults back in with mom and dad and examining the shifting definitions of household breadwinner.

The reality is when a family member takes an economic hit, somebody else must take up the slack.

When it comes to young children, a new national report shows grandparents are increasingly having to take on the role of raising kids.

Surveys by the Pew Research Center show the recession's triggered a spike in the number of children with grandparent caregivers.

Pew notes that while grandparents-as-caregivers is more common among blacks and Hispanics than whites, the sharpest rise since the recession began has been among whites.

The second table shows just how much grandparents have been leaned on during the downturn.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Plenty of parents would step in to help their kids no matter the circumstance and would jump at the chance to see their grandkids more often.

But we also know the recession's been unkind to older workers, their livelihoods and retirement portfolios.

Who'll take care of the grandparents?

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If you're taking caring of a grandchild or working through a changing family structure because of the Great Recession, drop us a line and share a story.

BONUS INFO: Terrific MPR video from earlier this year on the recession creating a return to multi-generational living.

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Teenage wasteland?

Posted at 11:30 AM on September 3, 2010 by Chris Farrell (1 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

From chief economics correspondent Chris Farrell

What a miserable start to the long Labor Day weekend, our yearly national tribute to the American worker. Federal statisticians reported that the nation lost 54,000 jobs in August and the unemployment rate rose a fraction to 9.6 percent. The government's broadest measure of unemployment-and-underemployment-and-marginal-employment also increased to 16.7 percent. While the private sector added 67,000 jobs, the pace of hiring remains anemic thirty-four months after the start of the Great Recession.

That's bad news for the job prospects of most workers. But the unemployment numbers have been positively dire for teenagers, the worst hit group during the Great Recession. The jobless rate for teenagers between 16 and 19 years old was 26.3 percent in August, up from around 15 percent before the recession struck.

Now that the summer is over it's worth taking a closer look at teens and jobs.

It isn't surprising that teens have had a tough time finding work. Who hasn't? And teens by definition don't have many skills to offer wary employers. The hike in the hourly minimum wage from $5.15 in 2007 to $7.25 in 2009 may have hurt a bit. Yet much economic research into the impact of an increase in the minimum wage on employment shows it has had little effect.

Still, the decline in youth employment has been precipitous. A closer look at the numbers suggests it's a tale of two America's: The teenage haves and the teenage have-nots.

For a majority of youngsters the decline in teenage unemployment reflects a long-term trend toward increased investment in schooling. College enrollment rates are at record levels with more than 70 percent of recent high school graduates going to college. That's up roughly 25 percent over the past quarter century. More than half of those ages 16-19 were enrolled in summer school sometime during June through August in 2009, close to three times higher than 20 years earlier, too. Better off parents are willing to pay for extra-curricular activities that may enhance a college resume, such as community service.

The real concern lies with lower income teenagers, especially from African-American and Hispanic families. Minority youths are concentrated in urban areas, while many low-wage entry-level jobs are in the suburbs (think food court). The growing ranks of the poor living in the suburbs tend to congregate in job-sparse low-income neighborhoods, too. Yet car ownership rates are low among the poor and for those dependent on public transit the systems often offer sparse coverage.

The Great Recession has cast a spotlight on the slow, steady erosion in the teenage job market. For those on the middle to upper rungs of the socioeconomic ladder, there's little cause for alarm to the extent that the lack of employment reflects greater investment in education. But the hostile job market is potentially disastrous for the long-term prospects for young adults from low-income families. The financial barriers to college are steep and among some minority groups the high school graduation rate is low, about 55 percent for Hispanics and 51 percent for African Americans. These young adults aren't even learning on-the-job skills that can pay off over a lifetime.

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Who's paying more for jobs during the Great Recession?

Posted at 11:53 AM on September 2, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

Finding work in the Great Recession has been difficult enough. But for the jobs that are out there, what's the recession done to wages?

A look at the newest data from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development show some winners and losers among industries.

Overall, median wages in Minnesota for open jobs have fallen from $11 an hour in the fourth quarter of 2007 at the cusp of recession to $10.19 an hour in the second three months of 2010, about a 7 percent drop.

Public administration saw the biggest cut in wages for open jobs during that period, dropping more than 50 percent to $8 an hour. Median wages for vacancies in mining jumped 40 percent, to $20.23 an hour.

Check out the chart below (click on the chart for a larger view). You find all the historical data here.

For sure, the data isn't perfect.

Take wages in real estate, for instance, where the median wage for vacant jobs stayed the same ($10 an hour) between the fourth quarter of 2007 to the second quarter of 2010.

Had I started with data from the second quarter of 2007, it would have looked like a cliff dive.

For whatever reason in that quarter the median hourly wage for vacant jobs in real estate was $33.65 -- an aberration -- so it would have looked as though wages for vacant real estate jobs had plunged during the recession.

(I chose the fourth quarter of 2007 since the recession began officially in December 2007.)

Check out the historical data and if you see anything surprising or counter intuitive, post below or drop us a line.

BONUS: Here's the MPR News story on the improving picture for job vacancies in Minnesota.

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Why is Minnesota's labor force sliding?

Posted at 9:30 AM on September 1, 2010 by Paul Tosto (1 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

When Minnesota saw a big drop in the state labor force in June, we asked in a half-funny way, "Hey labor force, where you going?"

We wondered why the improving economy wasn't bringing discouraged workers back into the labor force the way experts expected. But we were willing to believe June was an aberration.

Now we're not so sure.

The July data shows another big drop in the labor force. The chart below tracks the monthly Minnesota labor force numbers since the Great Recession began (click on chart for larger image).

June and July mark two straight months where 13,000 Minnesotans left the labor force.

Online, state seasonally adjusted labor force data go back more than 30 years, to 1976. There's never been a two-month drop even close to what we've seen in June and July. (Click on the chart below for a larger view.)

Minnesota's labor force participation rate -- the percentage of working age people who have a job or are unemployed and seeking a job -- was 71.9 percent in July. That's the lowest participation rate since 1989.

More than 30,000 Minnesotans are gone from the labor force since April. That just doesn't happen. Why is it happening now?

State experts have been worried for awhile now about the future health of Minnesota's economy given what's already projected to be a slow growth, aging workforce.

It's all moot, of course, if the August data shows a rebound. But a third month with a double-digit drop in the labor force will need some answers.

Anyone with perspective to share? Post below or drop us a line.

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September economic pulse: You're not buying it

Posted at 1:30 PM on September 9, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Add category, Jobs & unemployment, MinnEcon Indicator, Saving & spending

Consumer spending's taken a dive in the Great Recession. No jobs means no buying beyond essentials. We've heard that for months from Minnesotans in MPR's Public Insight Network.

Things seem a little better lately, though. Minnesota's jobless rate is holding its own at 6.8 percent and hopefully will drop a bit more when new data arrive next week.

So is that changing the outlook on spending and savings? Not really.

We asked network sources a few weeks ago to take their economic pulse. Things looking better? Spending more? Putting off any big purchases?

The responses we got back tell us many people are still snake-bit when it comes to spending. Many of us still aren't feeling a recovery and those who are aren't ready to write big checks yet for anything that isn't absolutely necessary.

"I am not in a position to save anything," said Betsey Porter of Bloomington. "I have to pay for my (car registration) tabs which went from $35/yr to $219/yr with the purchase of a new used car last year. YIKES!"

Check out the map below to read some of what we heard. The colors indicate how folks summed up their current outlook in mid-August. We got one bleak and one bright. "Holding steady" and "looking better" held the day but enough "worrisome" responses for us to know that the recession is still weighing on our friends and neighbors.

Tell us about your household here and we'll add your responses to the map.

James Allen of Alexandria was among several parents who told us college bills would make it tough to save more this fall.

"I expect my financial situation to worsen," he told us. "I will have two children in college and I will also be going back to school, which means less earning power on my part."

One result: "We are putting off home improvements, especially carpet, shingles and replacing the deck. We have really cut back on non-essential purchases, have been for the better part of a year."

Tom Jorgens of Crookston was among the most optimistic of Minnesotans who shared a story with us.

"I see growing signs of a recovery. Business is increasing again," he wrote. He saw himself able to increase his savings and investments.

National data show the personal savings rate of Americans continues to climb.

Here's a chart by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis showing personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income since 1970 (click on the chart for a larger view).

You can see savings took a dive in the 2000s but has been rebounding out of the recession.

The personal savings rate dipped to 5.9 percent in July, compared with 6.2 percent in June.

Still, it's light years better than the 1.9 percent recorded in November 2007 -- a month before the recession officially hit.

Here's another St. Louis Fed chart showing household debt payments as a percentage of disposable income. That debt burden continues to plummet. (Click on the chart for a larger view.)

We're hoping that when Minnesota's August jobless data is released next Thursday it shows unemployment falling. Recent news of a jump in job vacancies here is also a positive sign.

Even as a jobs recovery starts to reach more people, though, don't expect our love of leverage to return.

"At this point I'm just trying to pay down some debt and get a little ahead. Anything beyond that is being put off," said Paul Shryer of Eveleth, who said he was holding steady in August and expected about the same this month.

"I will save a bit more," he added, "mostly because I will (be) a bit closer to the surface."

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What's your household economic outlook? Post below or drop us a line directly.

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Small business owners: Credit crunch easing?

Posted at 10:20 AM on August 27, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment, Small business

My colleague Molly Bloom this week has been asking small business sources in MPR's Public Insight Network if the credit crunch is easing.

We want to give MinnEcon readers a chance to weigh in, too.

Nationally, there are a few cautious signs the business credit climate is improving.

The Federal Reserve's newest survey of officers from large banks found standards easing this spring on commercial and industrial loans to small firms for the first time since late 2006.

Click on the Fed chart for a larger, historical view.

Small firms are those with less than $50 million in annual sales.

That report gave the National Small Business Association hope that conditions were improving, though the group called it only a glimmer and said "access to sufficient credit remains a pronounced concern for America's small-business owners."

Last year MinnEcon got schooled by Minnesota small business people on the challenges of surviving in the recession.

Our sources then were telling us it was difficult to impossible at times in this recession to get the credit needed to run a small businesses.

So tell us now what you're seeing and help us put together future posts and stories.

Are you seeing credit easing? What could help strengthen your business? Post something below or contact us directly.

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Economic Lookout: In Rochester, recovery remains elusive

Posted at 5:00 PM on August 25, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Economic Lookouts, Jobs & unemployment

MinnEcon note: Teri Gibbons is a Rochester nurse and a MinnEcon economic lookout, sharing stories about the economy around her. In April, she gave us a thumbnail look at Rochester and shared frustrations about the housing market.

In her latest dispatch, she shows us why she's unconvinced that a recovery is underway.

Interested in being an Economic Lookout? Drop us a line.

Economic Lookout
Teri Gibbons | Rochester

Nurses living in the area are finding limited jobs but if they go to a website or two headhunters are wooing nurses from all over the US to work, in of all places, the facility they are being told there are no openings at.

Engineers are being laid off but then "consultants" from around the US and other areas of the globe are being brought in to do the job without benefits.

There needs to be another school levy if we are to be able to afford teachers and books but people are feeling tapped out so it is our children that suffer.

Unemployment extensions have almost doubled for this area. Media may project this image of billowing economic success but it is my opinion it is nothing more than an illusion.

Teri Gibbons is a registered nurse in Rochester. She says she's always looking at what's going on around her, trying to be impartial.

Statewide and Southeast Minnesota unemployment rates during the recession (click for a larger view).

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Home equity isn't paying for college?

Posted at 10:17 AM on August 24, 2010 by Paul Tosto (3 Comments)
Filed under: Education, Jobs & unemployment

I have three years until my first kid heads for college and I just assumed I'd be relying on the (remaining) equity in my home to pay for a big chunk of the tuition.

I'm rethinking that now after looking at surprising survey data showing home equity isn't the college financing tool I thought.

The report by Sallie Mae, the national college finance organization, shows home equity makes up only a sliver of the resources used by families to pay for higher education.

Middle-income families used home equity in slightly greater amounts than high-income families. Yet, overall, home equity only paid for 3 percent of the typical middle income family's college cost.

Scholarships and parent income are paying for college at levels higher than I expected. The report also notes, "Despite another year of sharp increases in college costs, more than half of families continue to pay for college without borrowing."

For those who do borrow, here's a breakdown of the parent borrowing piece (click for a larger view).

My first thought was that home equity is a small chunk now because equity's taken such a huge hit the past few years. Many people don't have any home equity left to spend for their kids' college.

And yet, Sallie Mae said the use of home equity credit grew this year compared to 2009.

The good news, I suppose, is that there are a lot more options beyond home equity and massive student loan debt to pay for college. Many families are cash-flowing a lot more college expense than I realized, which is encouraging and scary to me at the same time.

How are you paying for college? Doing anything creative or unusual? We know that families who've been hit hard by the recession are asking colleges to boost financial aid.

My colleague Tim Post reported this week that more grandparents are picking up the tab.

His report sparked a cool Facebook debate on whether students are working hard enough to pay their own way.

What's your plan? Post something below or drop us a line and share your knowledge.

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Job market stronger than we think?

Posted at 1:51 PM on August 23, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

We got some decent news last week that Minnesota's jobless rate held steady for July at 6.8 percent, although it's been pretty much a given that nationally things still stink for job creation.

But some interesting national data from two sources today suggests that as Labor Day approaches the job picture may be better than we realize.

First up, the Bureau of Labor Statistics lays out an interesting chart showing, "Gross job losses from closing and contracting private sector establishments have steadily decreased, from a recent high of 8.5 million in December 2008 to 6.8 million in December 2009 -- their lowest level since June 1994."

Click on the chart for a larger view.

Next comes the national outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which takes a look at their data today and concludes, "the job market is well on the road to recovery and that it is rebounding sooner and faster compared to the jobless recoveries that followed the previous two recessions."

Its tracking of planned job-cut announcements shows a "dramatic decline in layoffs since June 2009."(Click on the chart for a larger view.)

Neither the Bureau of Labor Statistics nor Challenger is arguing that things are fine. And one look at this chart from the Federal Reserve bank of Minneapolis confirms this is the harshest post-war recession for employment loss.

Minnesota's most recent data came with some positive signs -- the state's added 29,100 jobs over the past 12 months -- mixed with the reality that construction and other sectors are still struggling badly and job-wise, it's a long climb back.

We're starting to see the same patterns emerge nationally. There are reasons to be optimistic. But optimism doesn't pay the bills.

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What's your household economy look like for September? Feeling better or worse about your economic prospects? Tell us and help our reporting.

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Taking the entrepreneurial leap in recession

Posted at 10:30 AM on August 31, 2010 by Paul Tosto (1 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment, Small business

We're perpetually intrigued by entrepreneurs willing to roll the dice and start a business in bad economic times. In prior posts we've focused mostly on data and haven't done enough to explore the stories of individual entrepreneurs.

So today, we're highlighting Greg Jenum, who's going for it. If you're in the same boat, you'll see yourself in his story. If you're thinking about taking the leap, you'll find something of a road map.

Read on.

Jenum, 42, was laid off last summer. He'd been working in sales for a metal fabrication company west of the Twin Cities. After he was cut, he spent several months looking for another sales / operations management job, "but came up with nothing."

What he did have, though, was a degree in industrial engineering and an idea.

Six months before the layoff, he'd started a part-time business out of his basement creating specialty, heavy duty tarps, including fitted coverings for catamarans.

He had some history in this area. "I have worked in manufacturing companies since I was a teenager. My dad is a partner in a similar heavy duty sewing company. That is where my background in this type of manufacturing comes from."

So the layoff brought an opportunity -- a chance to take a trade he knew well and build it into a business.

His company, Atomic Tarp, is running now out of a shop on Highway 7 east of Hutchinson.

We asked him to share a few thoughts about the challenges. "Doing all the work myself," was the first thing he mentioned.

Then he clicked off some more.

I think I was prepared for it but it takes a lot of organization and planning being everything from the janitor, to production, to the president. I am self taught in most of the things I do, including learning to sew.

Marketing and getting the word out on the company and our capabilities. I have created and manage my own website. My younger brother designed the logo and helped setup the initial site.

Living lean and supporting a family of 7 (5 boys ages 14 -4). My wife has a part time job at the middle school.

I have spent the past 10 years or so moving myself into different positions within companies (Engineer, project manager, operations manager, sales, marketing) to give myself the experience of eventually owning my own company.

So the first thing to take away from Jenum's experience in starting a new business -- do something you know.

The second thing to take away: Find a local funding partner.

Jenum said about 70 percent of the funding for Atomic Tarp was done through a local bank. The remainder came through a less likely source: the Southwest Initiative Foundation, a non-profit that among other things makes micro loans of up to $35,000 to businesses in western Minnesota counties.

The foundation loan helped him move the business out of his basement and into a shop and buy more equipment. It's also provided him with a business consultant once a month with classes throughout the year.

Bernadette Berger, the foundation's micro enterprise program coordinator, ran some numbers for us that indicate there are others like Jenum trying the same thing.

I just ran our statistics to get new numbers of unemployed that received a loan from us to date, since July 1st, 2009 (the beginning of our last fiscal year).

We have made 30 micro-loans since 7/1/09, and 9 of those loans were to people that had lost their jobs to the recession. (Two of those 9 were to one borrower).

Those loans were all made last fall and last winter. Right now the job market has probably picked up locally for the summer, so we are not seeing many unemployed coming to us to start a business.

Because of what happened with the recession and layoffs, most of our loans were made to male owned / managed businesses (23 of 30 loans, or 76%).

Over the 9 full years we have had the program, our portfolio had typically been made up of 60-65% loans to women, and 35-40% loans to men.

Because of the recession, more of the layoffs seemed to affect men, and more of the wives still had jobs (and are holding tight to them), thus the switch in our portfolio statistics.

There are some interesting cross-currents when we talk about entrepreneurs and recession.

The national outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said recently its survey of job seekers showed only 3.4 percent opting to start a business in the first three months of 2010 and 3.9 percent in the second three months -- the lowest two-quarter average since the firm began tracking in 1986.

Its headline: LOWEST START-UP RATE ON RECORD AS JOBS, FRAGILE ECONOMY DETER ENTREPRENEURISM

On the flipside, we have data from the Minneapolis Fed showing the rates of new business formation in Minnesota, at least, stayed consistent despite the economy.

Jenum acknowledges it's been a slow start at Atomic Tarp, "as I have been trying to establish our own line of heavy duty sewn products, along with landing some consistent production contract sewing business. The summer has been better as this is the sailing season in the US and many purchase their replacement parts (catamaran trampolines) that we make here.

Jenum's reluctant to pass on advice at this point to would-be entrepreneurs.

"There is a lot of stress and uncertainty with being self employed. There is also a great deal of satisfaction in having shaped the business out of a few ideas, experience and good old hard work."

The long term plan, he says, is to "keep the company small (4-8 employees) and manufacture high quality, heavy duty products that are built to last."

Maybe the most important ingredient: "My wife has been very supportive and trusting that I can pull this off."

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Got a story or some insights to share about entrepreneurs or start-ups in Minnesota during the recession? Drop us a line.

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What's your September economic forecast?

Posted at 11:21 AM on August 21, 2010 by Paul Tosto (1 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

We've been asking Minnesotans the past couple weeks to tell us their economic outlook for September. We'll be posting responses and stories next week and wanted to give MinnEcon readers one more chance to weigh in.

Take a minute and tell us how you're feeling about the economy. How will that affect your spending and saving decisions for September?

We've been pretty glum generally on this recovery, though we were a bit encouraged by the latest data showing Minnesota's unemployment rate holding steady in July and still better than the nation.

Economist Louis Johnston gave us a good read on why the state and national rates are on different paths.

Here's your chance to give us a look at the economy as you see it.

Are you feeling better about September?

All thoughts welcome. Post something below or use our handy form.

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State and national job markets: Why they're on different paths

Posted at 3:17 PM on August 18, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

From economist Louis Johnston, St. John's University | College of St. Benedict

(8/19 UPDATE: Minnesota's July rate came in at 6.8 percent, unchanged from June.)

The unemployment rate has behaved very differently in Minnesota than in the nation as a whole.

National unemployment rose above 9 percent in May 2009, reached a peak of 10.1 percent in October 2009, and fell to 9.5 percent in July 2010.

By contrast, Minnesota's unemployment rate peaked in May and June 2009 at 8.4 percent and fell steadily since then. (Click on the chart for a larger view.)

Why have the state and national labor markets behaved so differently?

A good place to start is to examine types of unemployment and examine their causes. Economists divide unemployment into three broad varieties: frictional unemployment, structural unemployment, and cyclical unemployment.

The function of the labor market is to match available jobs with available workers. If all jobs and workers were the same, or if the set of jobs and workers were static and unchanging, this matching process would be quick and easy.

In the real world, however, this process takes time and thus workers will be unemployed while firms and workers try to make good matches.

This process creates two types of unemployment even when the economy is operating at normal levels. Frictional unemployment is the short-term unemployment associated with this process. Structural unemployment is the long-term and chronic unemployment created by long-term mismatches.

By contrast, cyclical unemployment is the extra unemployment that occurs during a recession. Recession-induced declines in sales force firms to reduce their hiring and even fire currently employees.

The unemployment rate was about 5 percent in the U.S. and Minnesota before the recession. Almost all of this unemployment was either frictional or structural.

Since December 2009, frictional, structural, and cyclical unemployment have all risen.

It is too early to say with certainty why Minnesota has been done better than the nation as a whole. However, when the dust settles it will probably be because of two factors.

First, cyclical unemployment likely fell more rapidly in Minnesota than in the rest of the country.

The 2008 and 2009 stimulus plans in may have had a bigger effect on Minnesota than on the national economy. Or, the mix of Minnesota industries might have recovered more quickly from the financial crisis of 2008 than did other state economies.

Second, structural unemployment did not rise as much in Minnesota as it did nationally.

For instance, the collapse of General Motors, Chrysler, and to a lesser extent Ford decimated labor markets Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana.

Many of these jobs are never coming back, and this will keep structural unemployment high in these areas.

The collapse of the housing bubble also contributes to structural unemployment, since building activity will probably not approach mid-2000s levels for many years.

Carpenters, electricians, and the like will have a difficult time matching their skills with available openings; in many cases, these job-seekers may have to leave this sector and retrain for work in other industries.

Johnston teaches economics at St. John's University and the College of St. Benedict and is a regular voice on MPR News.

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Economic Lookout: The economy as your neighbors see it

Posted at 1:00 PM on August 19, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Economic Lookouts, Greater Minnesota, Jobs & unemployment

Brent Olson is a Big Stone County commissioner who keeps a close eye on the western Minnesota economy. In May, he told us about spotting some hopeful economic signs in his hometown of Clinton.

Economic LookoutBrent Olson | Otrey Township, Big Stone County

In this latest post, he tries a cool experiment. "In one pleasant evening when we had a house full of people...I asked them to tell me what they wanted to about the economy."

The result: short videos that open a window on how our friends and neighbors are doing in the recession.

Given today's economic news, I thought this was a great time to post these. Minnesota's July jobless rate came in at 6.8 percent, unchanged from June.

The data came with some positive signs -- Minnesota has added 29,100 jobs over the past 12 months -- mixed with the reality that construction and other sectors are still struggling badly and job-wise, it's a long climb back.

The recent gathering at Olson's house offered a range of views and experiences on the state's labor market, which intrigued him. He wanted to get their unfiltered accounts.

"The guests ranged from a 17 year old about to be a high school senior who needed more hours (working) at the nursing home to a University of Minnesota employee with a PhD and a statewide staff," he told us.

Check out Olson's videos, then post your thoughts below. Tell us what you're seeing in this economy.

Interested in being an Economic Lookout? Contact us directly at MinnEcon.

Olson is a western Minnesota writer and Big Stone County commissioner

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Economic Lookout: What does 'jobs, jobs, jobs' really mean?

Posted at 8:51 AM on August 17, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

MinnEcon note: Aaron Brown last week talked about his concerns that policy makers were hoping again the Iron Range's mineral wealth would save its economy.

Economic Lookout
Aaron J. Brown | Balsam Township Itasca County

With Minnesota's July jobless data due out Thursday, we wanted to come back to Aaron one more time.

In his latest Economic Lookout piece, he notes how the political talk about "jobs, jobs, jobs" sometimes seems like a crutch. The conversation, he says, needs to shift to "how do we create jobs without giving away the store...without bankrupting our local government units.

"It's a challenge that people here in the Iron Range are becoming more familiar with."

Check out his video then post your thoughts below.

Interested in being an Economic Lookout? Contact us directly at MinnEcon.

Aaron Brown writes the MinnesotaBrown blog. He teaches communication at Hibbing Community College.

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What's your September economic forecast?

Posted at 7:48 AM on August 16, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

Minnesota's newest jobless numbers will be out Thursday and we'll see if July unemployment stays below 7 percent.

But as we wait for the new data, we want to know: Is your household feeling a recovery yet?

Take a minute and tell us how you're feeling about the economy. How will that affect your spending and saving decisions for September?

It's an odd time. The economy seems to be improving. Minnesota's June jobless rate came in at 6.8 percent. But it still didn't feel like a recovery as the state disclosed more than 14,000 Minnesotans left the workforce that month.

Answering a few general questions about your household's economic forecast will help make our economy reporting smarter.

All thoughts welcome. Post something below or use our handy form.

We'll share responses in posts next week.

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Two frightening charts

Posted at 10:51 AM on August 6, 2010 by Chris Farrell (2 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

From chief economics correspondent Chris Farrell

The recovery is intact, but it's subdued. That's what the latest employment report tells us. Taking into account the figures released by government statisticians this morning the economy has added 654,000 jobs so far this year. A majority of the job creation has come from the private sector. There are some glimmers of heartening news in the report. Specifically, the work week lengthened, wages ticked up a fraction, and private sector job growth more than doubled from the previous month. It reinforces the growing belief among economists and on Wall Street that the ominous prospect of a double dip recession is receding.

Still, it's going to take a long time for the job market to come back to life. That's the dismaying message in two created by Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution.

The first chart shows that the U.S. is recovering from the worst labor market in 60 years. The scholars look at the employment-population ratio--the ratio of the number of people employed to the total working age population--of the various recession since the end of the Second World War. The employment-to-population ratio is a broader measure of labor market health than the unemployment rate. By this measure, the U.S. is pretty sick.

The second chart is truly frightening. It suggests how long it might take to bring jobs back to their pre-recession level. So, if future job creation averages 208,000 a month--the average monthly job creation for the best year in the 2000s--it will take 11.5 years or 140 months to reach that goal. A more optimistic scenario is to take the best year of the 1990s. It would take "only" 5 years to close the job gap. It's worth staring at the chart.

My own sense is that companies will pick up their hiring in coming months, but nowhere near a record pace. The big driver of hiring will be lush corporate profits. "Pofits create jobs and profits continue to be the bright light in this recovery," says James Paulson, chief investment officer at Wells Capital Management. Lets hope business starts putting out the job-wanted signs soon.

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In Minnesota and nation, moonlighting is recession-proof

Posted at 4:59 PM on August 5, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

Ask Minnesotans these days why they work multiple jobs and you'll hear answers from fun money to desperate need.

Moonlighting has long been a big deal in the Upper Midwest. New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics confirm that but also offer a deeper look at the role it plays in good economies and bad.

Moonlighting appears to be recession-proof.

Here's a BLS chart showing multiple job holders by state. (Click on the chart for a larger view.)

Minnesota is number four, with moonlighters representing 9 percent of total state employment last year. South Dakota (10.3%), North Dakota (9.8%) and Nebraska (9.5%) were the top states.

The second chart shows moonlighting has stayed at a pretty consistent pace in good economies and bad (Click for a larger view).

"Multiple job holding in the Upper Great Plains has been very common, even given different economic circumstances," says Richard Rathge, director of the North Dakota State Data Center who's studied the issue.

Some of that has to do with agriculture where folks are working several jobs because of seasonality. In addition, in rural areas wages are often low so some folks are picking up extra jobs to maintain a desired standard of living.

When you consider that North Dakota's unemployment rate fluctuates very little relative to the nation, that suggests (moonlighting) is more due to structural issues (low wages, seasonal work) rather than shifts in the economy.

We asked Dave Senf, labor market analyst with the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development to share some thoughts on the BLS report. He's written before on the topic and gave us the heads-up on the new BLS data.

He thinks the averages may be underestimating the number of Minnesota's multiple job holders.

If you take the 8.8 percent and 9 percent (Minnesota moonlighting) rates which are annual rates and apply it to total annual employment ... multiple jobholders on an annual average were 244,622 and 245,852.

The annual estimate (244,622 and 245,852) gives the lowest estimate of workers who some time during the year had more than one job... Four persons each who hold a full-time job all year but who hold a second job for only one quarter each year would be counted up as one multiple jobholder on an annual average basis.

So a lot more than 244,622 workers probably held more than one job sometime during 2008.

Earlier this year, we checked in with Minnesotans in MPR's Public Insight Network about the pros and cons of working two or more jobs. Click on the icons below to read what they told us.

One other surprising nugget: The BLS report. indicates moonlighting increases with education: "Among workers age 25 and older, those with less than a high school diploma had a low multiple jobholding rate (2.4 percent). The rate was much higher (7.0 percent) for workers with an advanced degree..."

Workers whose main job was in education, public administration or health services were the most likely to be moonlighting. Makes sense that teachers, firefighters and others with flexible schedules would be most likely to pick up second jobs.

That doesn't mean they want to, of course. BLS noted that in 2004, the last time the question was asked, only 18 percent said they took second jobs for enjoyment. The majority wanted extra money or needed to pay down debt.

Leah Wilkes of Minneapolis moonlights as a cafe server 10 to15 hours a week to supplement her full time University of Minnesota job. She does it to pay bills and for a little fun money and said she likes working more than one job.

"With the serving, it's always a way to have cash in pocket and also, it keeps my body moving," she told us in March. I have been working in bars and restaurants for 20 years and sitting at a desk is difficult. I get my benefits from my job at the U, so I am in a better position than many in the service industry who don't have health or dental insurance."

On the downside, she added: "I'm tired."

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Minnesota's new angel tax credit, from a certified angel

Posted at 12:46 PM on August 3, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

Here's my bias when it comes to Minnesota's new Angel Tax Credit: Minnesota's already a better state for business than many realize. And I'm skeptical of any efforts to use tax policy to keep or attract businesses.

That said, I wanted some perspective on the new credit from a potential investor. Tim Huebsch fills that bill.

Huebsch is among the first seven folks certified as eligible to receive the angel tax credit for a qualified investment.

A source in MPR's Public Insight Network , Huebsch's been writing and commenting recently on the credit.

Huebsch works full time in information technology. He said this was his first foray into angel investing. He paid the $350 fee and is now certified to get the credit if and when he does invest.

"You look back at some of the really successful companies we've seen come through the Twin Cities, each one started out as a small start-up," he said. "If we can spur additional ones ... that's really building the next generation of companies."

Supporting those new-idea companies is important, he added, "especially in an economy now where it's awfully hard to get lending through traditional financial institutions....it's bringing us in line with what Wisconsin has done. It will spur some interest and discussion in the field of high tech.

The credit provides financial breaks to individual investors or funds that invest in high tech start-ups or young companies -- up to $125,000 per year per individual investor.

State officials approved $11 million for tax credits for 2010 and $12 million for each year for 2011 to 2014.

So far 15 businesses have been certified as potential credit recipients

(I'd love to know more about these businesses and their plans, by the way. Drop me a line if you can add an insight.)

For me, one of the key questions is it worth the money? How do you judge that? Jobs?

Return on investment is obviously an important goal for an investor. But Huebsch also views it as a way to test a concept, a pilot program to see if the incentive works.

I'm encouraged by the fact that we're trying something and doing it at a responsible level."

What's your take on the Angel Tax Credit? Post something below or drop us a line and keep the conversation going.

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How's that job search going? Not great?

Posted at 3:00 PM on July 30, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

Seems like each time we write a story about a Minnesotan finding work , we're confronted with a batch of worrisome data and stories of struggle.

That's the case today. New data shows the national economy hobbling along -- growing, but not at a pace that will trigger the burst of new job growth we've been expecting.

Sources in our Public Insight Network have been reminding us that a recovery without jobs isn't much of a recovery.

While things are looking up for people with work, it's a continual battle for the jobless, one that will worsen as unemployment benefits and other aid expire.

"The odds are horrible," said Pam Pommer, a Network source from Bloomington, one of more than 20 Network sources who checked in with us on their job search and told us what it's like out there.

"I applied for an office job at the city of Bloomington and there were about 300 other applicants, and we were first screened by a 100-question, multiple choice test," Pommer told us. "The pay being offered by many jobs is horrible and online applications and responses keep the process so impersonal."

She's been able to keep health coverage in the recession by the federal COBRA subsidy . "That has been a lifesaver for me. But that will run out in a couple of months."

Click on the map icons below to read what Pommer and others in our Network told us about the job market when we asked, "How's it going?"

Unemployment-wise, Minnesota's doing better than the nation. But that's no comfort to those who cannot find steady work. The new federal unemployment benefits extension won't help some long-term jobless folks and it seems to be creating more confusion.

"The 'extension,' only secures the transition from one tier to the next for those who have not yet exhausted the three tiers and the extended benefit (or fourth tier) of unemployment benefits. I'm in the fourth tier - and when the fourth tier expires, so do my benefits," said Kristine Holmgren, a Network source from Minneapolis.

"So I'm good for about four more weeks and then the ceiling falls in on me -- as it already has on millions of other Americans."

The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis offers a telling graphic on how lame the jobs rebound is in this recession compared to others. Here's their look at changes in Minnesota unemployment in this recession compared to others.

The (appropriately) gray line shows just how how much the job market has tanked in this recession compared to downturns past. I still believe the 80 and 81 recessions were worse. But as this recovery limps along, I'm less convinced.

Keith Nelson told us his graphics career took a hit in the recession and hasn't come back.

"I have found occasional short stints, but nothing lasting more than a few weeks," said Nelson, a Network source from Minneapolis.

As I have now totally exhausted my unemployment funds, the lack of any predictable income is causing me a lot of stress...it has been a rare occurrence that I even get a notice that a position has been filled by someone else when the job is in the graphics field.

Basically, he said, it's "very much like throwing applications down a black hole. The job market is so dry that it is hard to convince myself to even try."

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What are you seeing in the Minnesota job market? Post something below or contact us directly at MinnEcon.

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Finding work, and direction

Posted at 11:45 AM on July 28, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

We've met and talked to a lot of Minnesotans -- too many -- struggling with job loss and all the pain that comes with it. So when those who've shared stories with us find jobs, we want to make sure we highlight it.

Tom Koller's one of those folks we didn't want to forget.

An unemployed machinist, he started letting us track his efforts to retrain for a post-recession world.

Last fall, he wrote:

I was a PC tech (several years ago). The industry pretty much died. I did some driving and machinist work. The machine I was taught is not used now. I was laid off for lack of work.

I now need a current certification to get a job in a significantly changed computer industry.

The (Dislocated Worker) program is an effort in progress for me. I am turning 50. I am looking for help from them to get schooling to re-qualify myself for computer work.

By January, he'd been retrained and was ready. But he was still looking for work. It was an unvarnished lesson: retraining doesn't mean a new economy job is waiting. It's a fact that's come to the surface nationally this spring.

When Koller did find work it wasn't anything that matched his training.

He'd taken a job -- "no skill or education required" -- picking up and delivering cable TV and internet equipment. With his unemployment benefits exhausted and savings nearly gone, this was his best option.

So here's the good news. Koller dropped us a line recently to tell us he found work. Not exactly what he trained for, but something connected to technology. He's working for a company the refurbishes laser printers.

He'd interviewed with the company a year earlier, he told us. "They told me then that they chose someone else that was about as qualified as me, but had more recent experience. But I was choice number two."

He got hired recently when they needed another technician.

At this point he says he's finally making money "equal to what unemployment paid with the cable job."

And for as much trouble as the Great Recession has caused him, it's worth noting that the refurb work he's been hired for jumps during hard economic times.

Stepping back, looking at where he's been in the past couple years, Koller offers this advice on the jobless journey.

Know your limits, skill, money, education. Figure out new ways to use your limits. Know that to survive, you may not be able to live as you did.

Do not waste time looking for jobs that do not fit your qualifications, even low pay ones. If it is a job everyone is qualified for, everyone is applying. You are gambling on your future, the only thing you can count on, is that things can get worse. Plan to prevent this.

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MinnEcon's all about sharing the stories of Minnesotans in this economy. Every smarter makes us all a little smarter. Tell us your story about the economy.

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Being unemployed, being human

Posted at 11:36 AM on July 27, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

We've been intrigued with some unusual research out of the University of Minnesota examining our brains, feelings and motivations when we're out of work.

On the day we posted, the Pew Research Center published some equally fascinating stuff about the emotional toll extracted from people who want jobs but can't find one.

The national research group calls it, "Lost Income, Lost Friends -- and Loss of Self- respect."

The U study, which followed Minnesotans trying to find work, together with the Pew surveys, have us thinking we need to do more to look at the human side of being unemployed.

Among people who've been unemployed at least six months, 44 percent said the recession has cause "major changes" in their lives. We're not talking positive changes.

On MPR's Minnesota Today site, my colleague Mike Caputo has opened a discussion thread on the emotional roller coaster that is on the job search.

Please jump in and share your experience. The more we know, the smarter we get. Try Minnesota Today, post something below or contact us directly at MinnEcon.

After reading the U research, we reached out to Tom Koller, a Minnesotan in MPR's Public Insight Network who's been letting us follow his journey through unemployment and retraining via the Minnesota workforce programs.

Koller was laid off as a machinist in 2008, he's been navigating state programs for job seekers to become a computer network administrator. He got a job after months of working through the state retraining system -- but not the one he was training for.

We asked him to take a look a the U research abstract and offer some thoughts.

I would think it's obvious, that at times people need a break from stress. A break with a positive attitude is more effective than when you are depressed. Also, having a routine to cover all bases in a job search works to keep the breaks from becoming excessive.

My routine started with checking email, responding to urgent ones, then checking for new listings and responding accordingly. There were times I would find none. That is when I would start studying. If there were listings, I would follow up. As for study, I would go until my brain hit the day's limit and then I was done.

One important thing for me, was to focus on search sources that were easy to use. That pretty much was Craigslist. Focused and eternally updated.

I didn't apply to everything. That is demoralizing in itself.

The other side to that, is it is a hiring market right now. You will not get a job you do not fit.

An accountant will not be considered for a job digging ditches, the odds on having the needed strength and endurance are low. A ditch digger will not be considered for an accounting job because there are plenty of certified and experienced people available. So don't waste time looking for work you are not qualified for.

I looked for work I had done, then closely related work, then the related positions I was training for. All initially with good pay. The best I did was come up in second place. But when the second unemployment extension was looking iffy, and I was low on funds, I looked for low pay work. I found work quickly that touched on several past jobs, using the experience in new ways.

Then just as I started making money equal to unemployment on the pay-per-piece job, my earlier second place became good enough.

We'll be posting something separately later on Koller's new work.

Given the topic, though and the frustrations that surface in the U and Pew surveys, we wanted to give the last word to someone who's lived it.

"My best advice," said Koller: "Know your limits, skill, money, education. Figure out new ways to use your limits. Know that to survive, you may not be able to live as you did."

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The unemployment insurance trade-off

Posted at 11:01 AM on July 26, 2010 by Chris Farrell (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

From chief economics correspondent Chris Farrell

After a long fight Congress recently extended unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed. Nevertheless, the debate exposed a fascinating discussion in economics. It also highlighted the need to avoid simplistic economic concepts.

The economic argument against extending the nation's unemployment benefits is simple: Increasing the length of unemployment benefits has the perverse effect of increasing a spell of unemployment. The opponents aren't hard-hearted. It's simple economics.

Here's how Arthur Laffer, chairman of Laffer Associates and a leading supply-sider, illustrated the idea on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal:

On the face of it, the idea that higher unemployment benefits won't lead to more unemployment doesn't make much sense. Imagine what the unemployment rate would look like if unemployment benefits were universally $150,000 per year. My guess is we'd have a heck of a lot more unemployment. Common sense and personal experience indicate higher unemployment benefits will make unemployment less unattractive and thereby increase unemployment even in the Great Recession.

But the idea is anything but simple, even though most economists would agree that logic suggests a trade-off. (However, no one is making $150,000 on unemployment insurance--far from it.) But a new generation of economic research suggests the impact is relatively small. For instance, a 2000 study by economists David Card and Phillip Levine found that a 13 week extension leads to a one week increase in the average number of weeks of unemployment insurance collected by workers.

Even more important when thinking through an economic question like this is to weigh the costs against the benefits. For example, unemployment insurance allows families to keep up their consumption; the unemployed tend to spend most of the money they get, a boost to the economy in times of trouble; and unemployment insurance allows workers to search for a job that fits their skills better than simply settling for anything that pays. Harvard University economist Raj Chetty offers a slide show that goes through our existing knowledge of the trade-offs when it comes to unemployment insurance.

For example, he highlights a single earner with children and no savings. Without any unemployment insurance the parent is forced to make difficult choices to put food on the table and pay the bills, perhaps spending little time with her children or skipping medica their medical appointments. For this parent, unemployment insurance will increase the length of unemployment as she chooses to spend more time with children and to search more efiiciently and patiently for a good job. But this increase in duration is not a negative effect generated by distorted work incentives. It's a net benefit of having more cash on hand.

Here's the net result, according to Chetty:

*Evidence shows that even in normal times the benefits of unemployment insurance are large relative to work disincentive costs

*The benefits of unemployment insurance are likely to be larger in this deep, long recession. That's especially true for the long-term unemployed because of depleted assets, the collapse of credit markets, and risk of foreclosure

*The work disincentive effect of unemployment insurance is likely to be smaller than usual now with the great recession and slow recovery. People likely to take any job they can get.

*So, weighing costs against benefits, extending unemployment insurance further in current economy would significantly increase economic welfare

In other words, economics says Congress did the right thing and isn't stimulating joblessness. .

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In central Minnesota, an ancient skill in short supply

Posted at 11:50 AM on July 23, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Greater Minnesota, Jobs & unemployment

MinnEcon note: Dave Peters directs MPR's Ground Level project, a cool local journalism effort. He gave us a heads-up on a dispatch from Nancy Leasman, a Ground Level blogger in Todd County.

Nancy found a neat story about a Todd County business -- a barrel maker that can't find the workers it needs to grow.

It's a small reminder that while we wring our hands about high tech jobs and training, there are still jobs out there that rely on ancient skills and apprentice workers.

Here's her report.

Earlier this week, I had a lovely conversation with this area's only coopers. Yes, Todd County has a barrel making business: Black Swan Cooperage, just north of Clotho, next to the Berkness Sawmill. Heidi and Russ Karasch sat down with me and I learned about the fascinating history and present day job of barrel making.

I'll be writing about the cooperage for print publications but one of the Karaschs' comments really hit me as I look into the future of this county. They said that they can't find employees here in Todd County.

Historically, becoming a cooper required a seven year apprenticeship. Apprentices received a small amount of pay but since they started young, often around 14 (which Heidi did as she learned the trade from her father), by the time they were ready to start a family, they had a living wage.

Black Swan Cooperage pays a living wage; starting pay is $10 / hour. With modern day mechanization of parts of the process, it takes about two years to become a good cooper. The cooperage invests in its employees by teaching the necessary skills.

According to a recent MPR essay, our society has so emphasized education and technology that the number of skilled artisans is at an all time low. The essayist suggested a return to valuing the skills of hand work. But, are young people willing to take on the physical labor that goes with hand work?

The Karasches recently hired six new employees. Only one showed up on the first day of work. They don't know why the others didn't arrive for work. They tried to hire non-English speaking workers but found the communication barrier a stumbling block in crafting barrels.

This is one small example but what would this mean if it becomes a trend? What happens to an aging county if the work force is unwilling or unavailable to support the local economy?

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Unemployed? Watch out for those pleasant feelings

Posted at 1:50 PM on July 22, 2010 by Paul Tosto (3 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

Anxiety is a natural consequence of being unemployed. Regular MinnEcon readers know we've heard some harrowing tales of life in the recession.

But there's some unusual research out of the University of Minnesota that examines our brains, feelings and motivations when we're out of work.

Maybe the most interesting takeaway: A good day of job searching -- and good feelings that come from it -- can be hazardous.

While it might make you feel good, the U research shows you're likely to use it as a reason to back off.

7/23 UPDATE: Minnesota Public Radio's Mike Caputo has opened a discussion thread on this issue at MPR's Minnesota Today site. Please jump in and share your experience.

We're reading through the study -- "The Job-Search Grind: Perceived Progress, Self-Reactions, and Self-Regulation of Search Effort -- which is set for publication in next month's issue of the The Academy of Management Journal.

We're also trying to talk to one of the study's authors, U prof Connie R. Wanberg, for some additional questions. If we do we'll post more.

The study and the quotes from Wanberg provided by The Academy of Management Journal, though, are pretty fascinating.

"The standard advice to the unemployed," Dr. Wanberg observes, "is to treat a job search like a full-time job. Yet, only about 7% of our sample devoted six hours or more daily looking for work, while over 60% devoted a half day or less.

True, research has not determined how many hours a week is optimal, but it has shown that the more hours per week or per day one devotes to a job search, the greater one's chances of finding a job.

In any event, spending three or four hours a day or less certainly doesn't amount to a full-time effort."

Wanberg also warns that job seekers tends to "take breaks after progress in their search. Some individuals have a tendency to put 'all of their eggs in one basket,' and presume after applying for and researching a given job that they can take time off, because they are convinced they will get that particular job."

At MinnEcon, we've talked to lots of unemployed people over the course of a year. We're sharing the findings with some of those folks to see if it matches up with what they went through.

If you have some thoughts, post below or contact us directly at MinnEcon.

One final piece of advice from the study:

"Unemployed job-hunters tend to let up after a day of progress and positive feelings, whether the individuals involved are strongly goal-oriented or not," comments Prof. Wanberg.

"The big difference is seen after a bad day: people who are strongly goal-oriented shake off the blues and blahs and forge ahead more than ever the next day, while individuals less able to rise above those feelings let their efforts lag.

Unemployed job-seekers do well to keep two truths in mind: a job search is a bit of a roller coaster and it's important to keep an emotional balance."

Our own poor work habits and procrastination compelled us to skim the report and use the good stuff from the press release. But we're digging now and when we get more we'll post again.

Make us all a little smarter. Drop us a line and tell us what day-to-day unemployed life is like for you or someone you know.

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Note: We came across this research after reading a post on the Wall Street Journal website.

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The self employed dream

Posted at 1:07 PM on July 19, 2010 by Paul Tosto (2 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment, Small business

We've been looking and thinking recently about entrepreneurs in Minnesota.

We wanted to try to keep that discussion going and wanted to hear from Minnesotans who've taken the leap. They're self employed. Some are rolling the dice as older entrepreneurs in a recession.

None of it's easy. Many of the sources in MPR's Public Insight Network who responded to our query on entrepreneurs weren't making a ton of money from their independent gig and still held on to a job that could pay the bills.

(Tell us your story.)

"I have an office management business but currently have no clients. I also raise German Shepherds dogs but can't afford to buy a new male so there are puppies,"
said Suzette Riches, a Network source from Holloway in western Minnesota.

"I work one day a month as a finance manager for a manufacturing company," she added. "Without social security and unemployment, I would not be able to live."

Click on the map icons below to read what dozens of other Minnesotans told us about the dreams and realities of being self-employed.

Philip Lacher of Brooklyn Park told us about working full time while trying to pursue his wood carving passion as a small business.

After I came back from Iraq I really delved into my wood carving as a hobby. I had been carving since the age of 12 when my grandmother taught me. However, it really helped me with my transition back to civilian life in that I was able to relax and focus on creating something, rather than breaking/destroying something.

During my transition, someone stated that many vets coming home start their own businesses, because they want to be in control of their own work lives, rather than doing some other person's bidding. Someone in my family suggested I start selling my carvings, so going online was the logical next step. It required very little in terms of start up costs, as I already had most of my tools already.

This business does not sustain me, but really helps support my wood carving. My dream job would be to open up a shop on the North Shore and carve full time. However, with the economy the way it is I really have no illusions that someone buying something artistic is much lower on the totem pole.

There's been a healthy discussion lately about how entrepreneurial we really are in Minnesota.

Much of that discussion, though, has been tied to high tech business creation. Minnesota has a new "angel tax credit" providing tax incentives to investors willing to take a risk on high tech start-ups.

But should we paying more attention and doing more to support the entrepreneurs that are helping rebuild the economy but don't have the sexiest business?

A lot of the folks we've heard from are people with great plans who might not get the attention they deserve. People like Chuck Waibel from Milan.

"We run a winter-only CSA (community sponsored agriculture business) operated out of a special greenhouse that I designed," he wrote us.

My wife still has a full-time job, and I two part-time ones. In the next few years we intend to transition to complete self-employment.

Our business is unique, offering fresh Minnesota vegetables in the winter. We also have published a book on our efforts, and have spoken widely in the Mid west and Canada on our techniques.

We plan to greatly expand our efforts- it's just a matter of time, funding and effort.

Why's he doing it?

"We saw a need that wasn't being met,"Waibel said, "and realized that it was our task to meet it."

But "everything, from insurance to supplies, assumes that a person is in effect indentured to some big corporation," he added. "We can work around this, but it's annoying."

Tell us what you're seeing when it comes to small business, entrepreneurs and the self-employed dream. Post below or contact us directly.

BONUS INFO:

The research group EMSI. recently looked at the number of micro businesses by state for 2007. Here's their graphic showing the states with the greatest and smallest percentages of micro (fewer than 10 employees) and small businesses (click on the graphic for a larger view).

Minnesota came in with 72.6% micro businesses, just below the national average.

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Hey labor force, where you going?

Posted at 12:19 PM on July 15, 2010 by Paul Tosto (1 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

The most surprising data coming out of today's Minnesota June jobless report is the fact that some 14,000 Minnesotans left the labor force during the month.

What's that about?

Some of it's due to the end of 3,700 temporary Census jobs.

But the improving economy was supposed to be bringing discouraged workers back into the labor force.

Some experts had anticipated a rise in the unemployment rate as those who gave up looking for a job began looking again (and so would get counted in the labor force data).

But after a steady climb, the seasonally adjusted labor force in June is back to about where it was in January.

And while the June drop amounts to just under a half percent decline in Minnesota's labor force, it's the biggest monthly decline we've seen in years.

MPR will be reporting on the issue later today using sources from our Public Insight Network.

My colleague Elizabeth Dunbar reported this morning:

Officials said they don't know why so many unemployed Minnesotans are no longer seeking jobs, which means the state doesn't include them in the labor force for statistical reasons. The state work force participation rate is now 72.2 percent, while the national rate is 64.7 percent.

"It's certainly I think reasonable to speculate that some of this nearly 14,000 person departure, has been driven by some discouragement," said Steve Hine, the state's labor analyst.

But Hine said it's easier to see that as a national trend rather than a Minnesota one. The state has gained some 17,000 jobs in the last two months, an encouraging sign for workers.

"I'm a little hard-pressed to sort of understand that," he said of the declining work force participation rate.

My colleague Bob Collins wondered aloud back in December about who were these "discouraged workers" who were leaving the workforce in a recession?

We've tried before to get at the idea of Minnesota's real unemployment number.

Today's drop in Minnesota workforce could be just one other aberration in a recession full of aberrations.

But at this point in the "recovery," we're supposed to be talking about people who'd given up looking for work who are now encouraged enough that they are looking for work again.

Here's the historical data for Minnesota's work force, employment and unemployment.

Tell us what you see.


UPDATE: We asked economist Louis Johnston of the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University to take a look at the data and share some thoughts. He writes:

As Steve Hine said, Minnesota is following the national trend, with the (labor force participation rate) falling both in Minnesota and nationally.

That said, we still don't know why they both fell in June. It could simply be a sampling issue. (The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics) says that for May, the labor force participation rate in Minnesota could have been as low as 71.3% or as high as 74.

Thus, there may have been no real change from May to June, just noise introduced through the survey.The data show that Minnesota is still doing better than the national average.

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Definitions from Department of Employment and Economic Development "Measuring Unemployment" report, December 2009.

The "civilian labor force" is the sum of the employed plus the unemployed.

The employed are all people who, during the reference week,

a) did any work at all as paid employees, worked in their own business, profession or on their own farm, or worked 15 hours or more as unpaid workers in an enterprise operated by a member of their family, and

b) all those who were not working but who had jobs or businesses from which they were temporarily absent.

The unemployed are

a) people who had no employment during the reference week, were available for work, except for temporary illness, and had made specific efforts to find work sometime during the four-week period ending with the reference week, and

b) people who were waiting to be recalled to a job from which they had been laid off, regardless of whether they have been looking for work.

Workers who are "marginally attached" are people who wanted to work and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months.

"Discouraged workers" are people who stopped looking for jobs because they believe none (are) available for them.

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Entrepreneurs and recession: A new look

Posted at 12:27 PM on July 14, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment, Small business

A year ago, we asked: Is the Great Recession growing Minnesota entrepreneurs?

We didn't have a lot of numbers then, but we had anecdotal evidence it was happening and pretty solid data from that last recession that downturns bring out our inner entrepreneur.

We still don't have definitive answers. But new research by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis is opening a window on entrepreneurs and recession -- and poking holes into some conventional wisdom.

Minnesota can be a tough place to talk about entrepreneurs. This is the region that helped create the medical device industry and develop super computers. But the state doesn't look great in some comparisons of entrepreneurial activity.

But we have seen a flurry of people at least trying in the recession. The Minnesota Secretary of State's office reported a big jump in new business filings in 2009, 15 percent more than 2008 and the largest one-year gain in new business filings since 2002.

The Fed went looking for people who started new businesses in Minnesota in 2008 or 2009. They ended up talking to about 20, not enough to be scientific but enough to get a sense of what's happening.

When it came to funding their business, the owners who talked to the Fed said much of the money came from personal savings and credit. "They did receive funding from sources such as community banks, credit unions, government agencies, family members, and friends, but only after using their personal savings to provide an initial equity injection."

The Fed also found that, "of the 32 Minnesota-based companies included on the Fortune 1,000 list, well over half were started during tough economic times."

Maybe the most surprising finding is that the failure rates of new businesses are remarkably consistent in good times and in bad.

Generally speaking, new businesses struggle, whether they are started during a recession or an economic boom. In fact, most studies agree that the majority of new businesses fail.

When we look at five-year survival rates for the new firms started in Minnesota in any given year during the period from 1982 through 2005, the pattern for each year's batch of new firms is the same: the survival rate drops sharply in years one and two and flattens in years three to five.

(Source: Minneapolis Fed)

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If you're trying to start a Minnesota business in this recession, please drop a line and let us know how things are going.

Here are some recent posts we've done on entrepreneurs and Minnesota.
>Minnesota's Entrepreneurial Spirit?
>Economic Lookout: Entrepreneur in a recession
>Portrait of an entrepreneur

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Goodbye entry level?

Posted at 1:00 PM on July 8, 2010 by Paul Tosto (1 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment, Small business

If you were a Minnesota teenager in the Old Economy -- year 2000 -- the odds were good you were part of the state's workforce. If you were a young adult in that economy, you had a decent chance of getting a job without prior experience or a college degree.

But those entry level opportunities seem to be slipping away.

New research from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development showing the recession widening the gap between people with some work experience and those without.

It also shows the recession accelerating the retreat of teens from the workforce while their jobless rates skyrocket.

Together, those facts ought to keep us up at night.

There's great value to that foot-in-the-door job. It gives teens a first taste of the responsibilities of work. It provides important training for adults. We need teens and young adults to help rebuild the economy. But the recession's leaving people behind.

DEED found:

In the Twin Cities, nearly 55 percent of job openings in fourth quarter 2009 required some form of post-secondary training, compared with 31 percent of openings during fourth quarter 2001.

Likewise, the number of entry-level opportunities--those requiring no previous experience--declined from 38 percent in the fourth quarter of 2001 to 26 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009.

One more piece of data from DEED shows the rise of people 55 to 64 years old in the workforce as the teen workforce numbers decline (click on the chart for a larger view).

Youth labor force participation rates declined by more than 16 percentage points in the past 10 years, as Minnesota's youth opted for other opportunities, such as additional education.

Those who choose to search for part-time or summer jobs are now forced to compete with a larger pool of job seekers, some with more skills and experience. As a result, average unemployment rates for youth ages 16 to 19 topped 21 percent in 2009.

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'You miss the shift, you lose the money.'

Posted at 12:26 PM on July 7, 2010 by Paul Tosto (1 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

The "$100,000 waitress" was the talk of the day Tuesday. Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer discussed a lower minimum wage for people who work for tips, arguing that some restaurant servers make upward of $100,000 a year and that businesses needed more wage flexibility.

It was sound off time after that.

MPR news had a solid news story on the issue. My NewsCut colleague Bob Collins dove into Myths and the minimum wage debate.

We asked Minnesotans in MPR's Public Insight Network if tips should be figured into someone's base wages. We got some terrific responses we wanted to highlight.

Leah Wilkes is a Network source who moonlights 10 to 15 hours a week at a Twin Cities café. That's the real situation for many people who wait tables. It's not a career. It's a means to bring in some needed cash in a state that has one of highest percentages in the nation of people who work multiple jobs.

Emmer cited a report that used data from 1999 to make the case that "tip credits have essentially no negative impact on wages for tipped employees" and would ultimately help businesses.

That minimum wage check, however, serves a very practical need, says Wilkes.

"I can't remember the last time I actually got a paycheck from my service job. In other words, the paychecks are garnished to cover the taxes on the tips that I make," she told us.

"It's not icing on the cake and usually at the end of the year, I owe a little more." She add:

Almost all service industry people I know don't have benefits.

I do, because I work another job. But for the majority, any illness or injury (off the job) is not covered and I have seen people lose their shirts for emergency visits - not only in the cost of care but also in the lost shifts. There is no such thing as "sick time" in the service industry.

You miss the shift, you lose the money.

Drop us a line and share your insights.

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Moved home in recession. When will you be on your own again?

Posted at 12:03 PM on July 6, 2010 by Paul Tosto (1 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

Back in November, my MPR colleagues and I examined the issue of young adults moving home in the recession. It was a compelling package, driven by the voices of Minnesotans in MPR's Public Insight Network.

But we lost track of the issue until Allison Stratton dropped us a line recently with six words:

Pay cut, wage freeze. Parents' house.

We'd been asking MinnEcon readers to tell us -- in six words -- what happened to their housing during the recession.

Stratton's comments got us thinking about people we've talked to in their mid-20s or older who were hurt in the recession and needed to move in with family. The economy's still pretty bad, but it's better than last year.

So are people who moved home in 2008 and 2009 financially secure enough in 2010 to be back out on there own?

If you have a story to share, drop us a line.

Stratton 24, is an interior designer in the Twin Cities. She moved home in November when her apartment lease was up. She wrote us:

After my pay was cut 25% and a wave of lay-offs in my company, I decided it would be best to live with my parents until I felt secure. Now I feel secure, but haven't been able to save any money, and need a raise before I can be on my own again.

On the upside, she says work at her business is picking up, "so I hope that the financial struggles of the employees lessen soon."

My friends and co-workers have all been affected by the economy in some way.

None of them have moved home, but they have all had to adjust their lives in some way. One friend took a job outside of her desired career path. Another took a part-time retail job while she built her own freelance client base. One friend had been stuck in a $9/hr internship for a couple years until he was able to land a bill collection job a few months ago.

My co-workers have had to cut back on their budget significantly. I think my student loan payments have put more of a strain on my finances compared to them. But, that is a separate financial issue for us quarter-lifers that I think needs to be addressed!

Regular MinnEcon readers know we've worried about new grads, their job prospects and what happens if they decide they can't stay in Minnesota.

Stratton's story reminds us that even for new grads with jobs, this recession has been a struggle.

Nationally, 13 percent of parents with grown children say one of their adult sons or daughters has moved back home in the past year, the Pew Research Center reported in March.

Social scientists call them "boomerangers" -- young adults who move in with parents after living away from home. This recession has produced a bumper crop.

The current decline has been particularly steep among young women; the proportion who live by themselves fell by a full percentage point to 6.1%. Among young men, the share living on their own fell 0.2 percentage points to 8.4%, a statistically insignificant change.

Happily, Stratton said she has a "great relationship with my parents.They are very supportive and understanding of my situation."

But it's also "an emotional strain for me to owe them rent and be "mooching" off of them at this age!"

Here's a survey from collegegrad.com that we highlighted in November. It found:

Among 2009 U.S. college graduates, 80 percent moved back home with their parents after graduation, up from 77 percent in 2008, 73 percent in 2007, and 67 percent in 2006....nearly 70 percent of recent grads did not have jobs lined up when they graduated.

Check out this cool video from MPR about moving home.

Here's some good, quick advice from the blog, "Adult Children Living at Home," about making this relationship work.

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End of the road for added jobless benefits?

Posted at 12:20 PM on June 25, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

We've talked to a lot of people during the recession who've been put out of work and absolutely need their unemployment benefits to make ends meet. Now it appears the extension of jobless aid from the feds is near an end.

The Pioneer Press this morning reported, "In Minnesota, about 600 people a week are exhausting their benefits. State officials estimate that number will double in September."

We'll be taking a deeper look at the issue in upcoming posts checking in with MPR's Public Insight Network to see how those who've been getting jobless benefits are faring.

They are people like Kristine Holmgren, who told us her story back in March of being unemployed while trying to hang on to her home.

"I am in the final, final, final cycle of unemployment benefits," she wrote us this afternoon.

My "balance" is $4800 -- and will expire, I estimate, in early September. I was SO hoping for an extension of benefits - but I'm not planning on it.

Please, let me know if you hear ANYTHING about an extension.

Holmgren says she's been trying to get answers on what Thursday's Senate vote means for her future but with no luck yet.

I've called Klobuchar and Franken's office - - - but their staffs are woefully inadequate in this issue. They seem to know next-to-nothing about our predicament here. No one, no one can answer any questions about the legislation that currently failed.

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Minnesota's entrepreneurial spirit?

Posted at 12:08 PM on June 24, 2010 by Paul Tosto (3 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

When Minnesota ends up near the bottom of a list, a few clicks from Mississippi, we should take note.

That's where the state finds itself in a new index of entrepreneurial activity produced by the Kauffman Foundation.

There are limitations to the data, no doubt.

Still, the report opens the door to what could be a good conversation: Is the Great Recession generating new entrepreneurs and self-employed careers?

Post something below or share a story here about what you're seeing.

We'll also get some good data in a few weeks when the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis releases its survey and research on small businesses start-ups in the Upper Midwest during the recession.

For now, though, two questions. 1.) How's the recession affecting entrepreneurial activity and 2.) Why isn't Minnesota more entrepreneurial?

In decades past, this question would have been a joke. This is the region that helped create the medical device industry, develop super computers and other cool stuff. But, arguably, we're in kind of a rut and the debate seems to be stuck in a political battle over taxes.

In the Kauffman report, the states with the lowest rates of entrepreneurial activity were Mississippi, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Alabama and Minnesota, which showed a rate of 220 new business owners per 100,000 adult population in 2009. (Check the bottom of the post for Kauffman's methodology.)

Generally, the Midwest states track lower. The main reason is that there is less population and economic growth in the Midwest, says Rob Fairlie, the study's author. "Areas that are faster growing with lots of construction typically have a lot of new businesses. Construction has the highest rate of business creation of all major industries."

Here's a map of of the Kauffman index. Oklahoma and Montana were tops with 470 new business owners per 100,000.

We speculated last year that the recession was spawning entrepreneurs.

We've profiled a Mankato entrepreneur with a business creating clothing from bamboo fibers.

We've also worried aloud about Minnesota's ability to keep its best and brightest in-state.

Together, the work we've done created more questions for us than answers on recession, entrepreneurs and Minnesota, which is why we need your help.

Please add to the discussion. Tell us your experiences being self-employed or starting a business in the recession.

We plan to talk in-depth with Fairlie, the Kauffman author. We'll add your stories, his comments and new data to future posts and we'll all get smarter about what's happening.

**********************************************
Here's the boilerplate on how Kauffman creates the index: The index seeks to measure the "the rate of business creation at the individual owner level."

Presenting the percentage of the adult, non-businessowner population that starts a business each month, the Kauffman Index captures all new business owners, including those who own incorporated or unincorporated businesses, and those who are employers or non-employers.

The Kauffman Index is calculated from matched data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly survey conducted by the U.S. Bureau of the Census and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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Too many nursing grads? A look at first-time test takers

Posted at 12:36 PM on June 21, 2010 by Paul Tosto (3 Comments)
Filed under: Health care, Jobs & unemployment

We spent a good chunk of last week examining the question: Are colleges producing too many registered nurses?

We heard from lots of people who say no, that the shortage of RNs is real and that the idea schools are producing too many is wrong or that any imbalance is simply a short-term blip caused by the recession.

Our audience has been great about passing on data to us. Much obliged. We'll have at least two posts on the issue this week.

Today, we look at Minnesota and national data suggested by a reader: The number and pass rates of students who take the NCLEX exam for the time to become registered nurses.

This is the gateway national exam that "measures the competencies needed to perform safely and effectively as a newly licensed, entry-level nurse." So as a measure of annual new supply of nurses, it's not bad. (As we'll also see, it's not conclusive!)

Let's look first at Minnesota data (.pdf page 20). The National Council of State Boards of Nursing reports that 2,939 students in Minnesota took the NCLEX RN test for the first time between October 2008 and September 2009. A total of 2,501 passed.

That likely underestimates the number of new nurses supplied annually, however. The national nursing group doesn't provide state-by-state data on repeat takers -- students who failed the exam once and tried again. Nationally, repeaters made up about 11 percent of the total pool of successful U.S. test takers.

So if we tack on 11 percent on to 2,501 we get about 2,776 students who passed the NCLEX in Minnesota in the most recent 12 month period available.

Here are the two estimates we have for the demand for RNs in Minnesota:
State officials project a need for about 2,400 new nurses a year through 2019.

EMSI projects 2,629 Minnesota RN openings per year though 2015.

The EMSI data suggests the supply of new Minnesota nurses matches up pretty well with projected demand, though the official state projections suggest an annual oversupply of about 17 percent.

If you step back, though, and look at the national and international supply of nurses, there's still reason to be worried.

The national nursing council data (.pdf page 19) show a total of 132,940 U.S. students passing the NCLEX exam for the first time in fiscal 2009. That's significantly higher than the 105,020 annual national need EMSI projects.

Now add in the number internationally educated students who took the NCLEX exam for the first time or repeated and you get a total of 148,266 nurses who passed the exam and are able to enter the health system work force as RNs.

Nearly all those international students come from countries where the council expects them to be licenses and in U.S. states and territories.

In fiscal 2006, that total number of domestic and international students passing came in at 128,154.

That's a big jump in just a few years.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics still views the overall job outlook for RNs as excellent and notes that "hundreds of thousands of job openings will result from the need to replace experienced nurses who leave the occupation."

The American Association of Colleges of Nursing says, "The United States is in the midst of a nursing shortage that is expected to intensify as baby boomers age and the need for health care grows. Compounding the problem is the fact that nursing colleges and universities across the country are struggling to expand enrollment levels to meet the rising demand for nursing care."

The national data, though, show the supply of students passing their gateway RN exam each year is significantly higher than the annual needs BLS and others are projecting.

So how do we reconcile the data? Drop us a line if you can do it.

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Too many nursing grads? A deeper look at data

Posted at 12:29 PM on June 18, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Health care, Jobs & unemployment

We continue to write and ask questions about the supply and demand for nurses. It's generated a terrific conversation at our site and at Economic Modeling Specialists, the research group that's been equally interested in the topic.

We don't have any definite answers. (If you do, drop us a line.) So in this post, we'll dive a little deeper into the data.

The EMSI researchers got the ball rolling when they created this chart showing the number of students completing a nursing program last year and their projection of annual registered nurse openings through 2015.

As we noted, there are lots of caveats, including the fact that the data counts people who are in nursing currently and moving up the degree ladder.

The EMSI guys then sent us the Minnesota data broken down by degree. The big number of 2009 nursing completers -- 4,271 -- includes associate's, bachelor's and master's, degrees for nurse anesthetist and public health nursing, etc.

We decided to look at associate's and bachelor's completers in 2008. Those are the folks most likely entering nursing for the first time.

That works out to 3,200 and matches up with data produced by the Minnesota Office of Higher Education.

Some of those bachelor's degree grads aren't new to nursing. Some bachelor of nursing science programs are designed for people who are already nurses and are simply adding to their knowledge, so they aren't necessarily adding to the supply.

So we'll lop 10 percent off the total and that brings us down to about 2,880, which is in line with the tally by the Minnesota Board of Nursing of all Minnesota program graduates preparing for registered nurse licensure in 2008.

So let's round off: 2,900 registered nursing grads in 2008. EMSI estimates Minnesota will need to add 2,600 nurses a year for the next five years. Minnesota state estimates put the new nurses need at an average of 2,400 a year through 2019.

Arguably, we can look at the data and conclude Minnesota schools are producing 300 to 500 more nurses a year beyond the projected need, which is pretty close to what we were talking about in our first post on the issue.

Let's assume the students entering the registered nurse job market with a bachelor's degree have an advantage over those with a two- year degree.

So if the oversupply falls completely on the 2,000 associate's degree completers, we're talking about 15 percent to 25 percent of associate degree completers who might have a hard time finding work.

I realize I'm in absolutely squishy territory.

In my work in journalism, I typically don't let the audience into my thought process. As you can tell, it's scary and vaguely incoherent.

But I think we ought to take a closer look two year programs.

We've seen a spike in the enrollments for two-year nursing programs. Are those grads viewed equally with bachelor's holders in seeking RN jobs? Could we end up with an oversupply of two-year degree registered nurses and a shortage of RNs with a bachelor's or higher?

In a post yesterday, EMSI highlighted an interview with Mary Bennett, director of Western Kentucky University's School of Nursing, who's been following the discussion. In her EMSI interview:

Bennett said graduates from WKU's baccalaureate program aren't having trouble finding jobs, but the issue might be at the two-year level.

"I think [the US is] probably at this point overproducing associate-degree nurses," she said.

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We're going to look at the two-year issue in a post next week. If you're connected to a two-year program as a student, instructor, dean, whatever, we'd love to hear from you.

We're also looking for placement data for two year nursing school graduates, locally or nationally. If you have some for your school, please send it.

One last thing: an Alabama community college is offering nursing students a guarantee: If you don't have a job offer within six months of graduation, you'll get a full tuition scholarship for an additional 30 credits.

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Minneapolis Fed outlook brightens a bit

Posted at 11:01 AM on June 16, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

The Federal Bank of Minneapolis was understandably grim at the start of 2010 as it predicted a so-so recovery for the year and, really, a miserable 2010 for Minnesota job growth.

Six months later, the Fed's newest forecasts offer a little sunshine for the rest of this year and into 2011.

The bottom line in Minnesota: If you have a job, you should see your income rise. If you're unemployed, the job market will be better but still won't be roaring back. If you're connected to new home construction, hang on tight.

Below are all charts produced by the Minneapolis Fed and released this morning. You can find all the data here. Click on the charts for a larger view.

If you only have a few minutes, try the audio slide show. Either way, if you see something interesting, drop us a line and tell us.

Here's a look at the Fed's employment growth predictions:

("UP" in the charts refers to Michigan's Upper Peninsula)

Not great, but this is a better outlook than at the start of the year when the Fed was projecting no job growth at all for Minnesota and western Wisconsin in 2010.

The slip of sunlight on employment growth won't have a big effect on the state's jobless rate.

If you are employed, you should see a bigger paycheck. Personal income for Minnesotans is expected to rise the next couple years, although it will still track slower than the nation, according to the Minneapolis Fed.

Yes, MinnEcon readers, it's at this point that I'm starting to wonder if my "Fed outlook brightens" headline was too optimistic. But I'll push ahead.

The Minneapolis Fed delivers a bleak forecast for housing starts, noting that, "In Minnesota and Wisconsin, housing units authorized have not only dropped sharply during the past few years, but they are also below levels observed over 30 years ago."

The chart shows a tough 2011.

Said the Fed: "Since forecasting models typically rely on long-term and recent trends, it is not surprising that the model points to a continued drop. At some point, population and market pressures will likely spur a more sustained demand for housing."

But the Minneapolis Fed, a group with a pretty good track record of economic forecasting, concedes it doesn't know when the turning point will come.

6/16 UPDATE: Minneapolis Fed economist Rob Grunewald told reporters it will likely be several years before Minnesota recovers all the jobs it lost in the recession.

"At that pace of growth and what out forecast models show going forward, it will still take beyond potentially 2013 to achieve the employment levels seen prior to the recession," he said.

***************************************************
Today's Fed data match up pretty well with the insights of Minnesotans in MPR's Public Insight Network.

We've been asking people to finish the sentence, "I'll believe the recession's over when ... "

Here's what folks told us back in February.

Check it out and the you give it a shot: "I'll believe the recession's over when..."

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The educational "haves" and "have nots"

Posted at 11:27 AM on June 15, 2010 by Chris Farrell (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

From chief economics correspondent Chris Farrell

The American economy is starting to mend from the Great Recession, the nastiest downturn since the 1930s. The return to growth and better economic numbers is welcome, although a number of nerve wracking problems lurk in the global economy, especially Europe's sovereign debt crisis and China's slowdown.

Yet assuming that the expansion remains intact, it will still take a long time for the worst labor market in 60 years to show signs of vigor. The unemployment rate is steep at 9.7 percent and the unemployment-and-underemployment rate is even higher at 16.6 percent.

That's bad news for the job and income prospects of most workers, from blue collar employees looking to earn a paycheck at a retail store and on a factory floor to white collar managers seeking a spot in a cubicle and an office.

These are catastrophic numbers for workers with less education and less skill. Recessions often accelerate an underlying economic transformation that has been gaining momentum for years. Well, it has been apparent for the three decades that the earnings gap between those workers with a college degree and more and those with a high school degree only and less has been widening. Take this chart created by David Leonhardt of the New York Times in a recent article on the value of a college education.

The unemployment disparity between the educated haves and have nots is striking. Below are two charts of unemployment rates between 2000 and May, 2010. They look very similar at a quick glance. But the perecentage differences are striking.

Here is the unemployment rate of of those 25 and older with less than a high school diploma since 2000. Over the past decade the unemployment rate for this group never got below 6 percent. It has been 15 percent or more since May 2009.

Contrast that experience withthe unemployment rate of workers 25 and older with a BA or more.

The unemployment rate of this group over the past decade hasn't breached 5%. Little wonder more and more people worry that America is evolving into a two-tier society.

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Good signs and bad in the region's temp market

Posted at 12:00 PM on June 11, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

A jump in the demand for temporary labor is typically viewed as a good sign of recovery -- employers taking baby steps, at least, to hire people and start producing goods and services again coming out of recession.

And as a newly released survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis shows, demands for temp labor in the region are jumping.

The downside (yeah, there's always a downside) is that the Great Recession's driven a lot more people to seek temp work and that's hurt pay. Also, the concept of "temporary" appears to be changing.

Here's how the Fed breaks down by businesses in Minnesota, western Wisconsin and North Dakota (click on the chart for a larger view)

"Staffing services firms report that their business is picking up--aggressively in some cases," the Fed writes.

"The unpleasant news? "With an ample supply of available workers, client firms are picky about whom they choose to accept for temporary work, and pay rates generally have been flat, or worse ... A medium-sized staffing agency in Wisconsin commented that office and administrative professionals used to earn between $12 and $14 per hour, but "now, $10 with no flex."

The Fed's findings reinforce what my colleagues at MPR News have seen in their reporting.

Annie Baxter's story last fall laid out how temp jobs are a mixed blessing in this economy.

And in a recent MinnEcon post, MPR's chief economics correspondent Chris Farrell highlighted research showing that for low-income, low-skill workers, a temp job "actually lowers a worker's employment and income prospects over time. It doesn't lead to full time work."

Another frustration is that the staffing companies responding to the Fed survey say their clients "are still taking a wait-and-see approach to full-time permanent hiring, preferring to stay as lean and flexible as possible by depending on temporary and contract workers for long periods."

That's a good sign if you're a business trying to find your footing coming out of the worst recession in decades. It's not so good if you're a worker hoping your part time gig will turn into something permanent.

***********************************************
Got insight into Minnesota's temp labor market? Post below or contact us directly.

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Temp work and low skill workers

Posted at 2:01 PM on June 4, 2010 by Chris Farrell (1 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

From chief economics correspondent Chris Farrell

It's hard to put a good spin on today's employment report. Sure, the headline figure that the economy added 431,000 jobs in May looks good. But the bulk of the job gain came from hires for the Census Bureau and that survey work ends soon. The private sector added a mere 41,000 jobs. Of course, however disappointing, the 41,000 private sector gain was a huge improvement over the loss of 334,000 private sector jobs in May 2009.

One positive sign is that for the eighth month in a row temporary hiring's were up in the private sector. It's a traditional sign that a pick-up in full-time employment is coming. Companies prefer to hire temps during the early stage of a recovery in case the rebound falters. Once it's clear that the expansion is durable employers often offer temps a full time job. It's also a good way for employers to screen though potential hires.

At least that's the theory. A recent study into the temp market for low-income low-skill workers throws cold water on the idea, at least for a critical segment of the labor market. In Do Temporary-Help Jobs Improve Labor Market Outcomes for Low-Skilled Workers? Evidence from 'Work First,' economist David Autor of MIT and Susan Houseman of the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research suggest that temp work actually lowers a worker's employment and income prospects over time. It doesn't lead to full time work.

The scholars looked into a welfare-to-work program in Detroit. The Detroit Work First and Michigan Unemployment Insurance data sets they tapped into are from 1999 to 2003. Work First places people into either temporary work or long-term positions. The results of the study show that hires into full time work increased their earnings by about $2,000 annually compared to what they earned before. In sharp contrast the earnings of temp workers dropped by some $1,000 a year compared to their previous earnings history. "Thus, despite much descriptive evidence to the contrary, our analysis indicates that temporary-help placements have no net beneficial effect for the earnings, employment and labor market advancement of low-skilled workers.

Basically, the full-time jobs did better because the earnings were more stable and they also acted as stepping stones into stable jobs. But placement into temp work increased job churn and more employment in the temp sector rather than a ladder into a permanent position.

The economy still has upward momentum, despite a number of worrisome headwinds. But when it comes to people living around the poverty line it will take years of economic growth before the low-skill poorly educated sector of the job market sees an improvement.

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Minnesota's job recovery: Three-plus years to go

Posted at 11:27 AM on June 2, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

The long climb back is a recurring theme for us now when we talk about jobs in Minnesota. With a decade's worth of job growth wiped out in the Great Recession, the obvious question is when do we get it back.

A new estimate indicates it will be 2013.

"Since the beginning of the recession, Minnesota has lost more than 125,000 jobs," Creighton University economic Ernie Goss wrote in his June regional economy update.

"Based on the latest state job data and Minnesota's recovery from the 2001 recession, I [do] not expect the state to fully restore these jobs until September 2013."

The good news from Creighton's survey of supply managers is that May was the tenth straight month the index has risen above "growth neutral," indicating there are positive things going on in this economy.

If Creighton's estimate holds true it will be a total of nearly six years between the start of the recession and when Minnesota restores the jobs the recession killed.

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Did you just offer me a job? Should I ask?

Posted at 11:12 AM on May 28, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

We took a look Thursday at the controversy over whether a job offer was made to a potential University of Minnesota basketball coach. The question led to a $1.2 million judgment against the U.

It got me thinking about those gray areas in the job world. I mentioned Thursday I could recall a bunch of jobs I took on a handshake or a phone call, almost afraid to ask, "So, the job is mine, right?"

MPR News reporter Martin Moylan took a look at those issues through the eyes of legal experts.

I'm looking for people to share stories of being in similar circumstances that I plan to follow up on next week.

Meanwhile, I reached out to some human resources executives in MPR's Public Insight Network to share some thoughts about the art of the job offer and how to avoid these kinds of sticky (and possibly expensive!) situations.

I got back two solid responses I wanted to share. Neither are connected to the U case. Take a look and then add to the conversation.

"Most recruiters are very careful about offers so that there is no confusion over whether a formal offer has been extended. That does not mean that only a written offer creates an obligation," said Mike Carey, senior vice president for human resources for PDI Ninth House, an executive recruiting and strategy firm.

When a recruiter or a manager from an organization extend an offer verbally, I would consider it binding and an obligation. If not legally, at least ethically, the hiring organization has created a verbal contract at that point.

However, the gray area comes into play over what was actually said and implied....Managers and recruiters should be very clear about where they are in the process and tell the candidate explicitly, that they are still in the pre-offer stage.

Candidates, he adds, should never agree to something without seeing the offer in writing to avoid this kind of situation.

These kinds of problems are easily avoided when an organization has a process to hire people and stick to it, says Melanie Ulrich.

"From my prospective, if a verbal agreement is made with no exceptions stated, it can be held up on a court of law," said Ulrich, senior manager for compensation and benefits at Twin Cities Public Television.

There was no verbiage from Tubby say "pending background checks" or "I just need to run this up the ladder"---from what I have seen from the conversations, it was all absolute. I know when we hire someone, we state that the hiring is contingent on background checks.

Its amazing how one or two phrases like the ones I stated above could have been uttered and would have saved the U the million plus dollars.

If you've been in this gray area before -- job offer or not? -- either as a prospective employee or as the one doing the hiring, share your story and make us all a little smarter.

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Is this a job offer, or are we just talking?

Posted at 11:23 AM on May 27, 2010 by Paul Tosto (3 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

"A 14-minute phone call has cost the University of Minnesota $1.2 million."

That's how the Pioneer Press this morning summed up the trial over whether University of Minnesota basketball coach Tubby Smith made a job offer to a potential assistant or simply discussed the possibility.

Beyond the cash and basketball angles, it got me wondering when a job offer is a job offer and when it's just talk.

Finding or keeping a job has been tough enough in the Great Recession. We're starting to hear more stories of people getting hired, which is great. But as hiring slowly resumes, do workers need to make absolutely sure they have a deal in hand?

I can recall a bunch of jobs I took on a handshake or a phone call, hoping the paperwork would follow. There's a lot of trust greasing the hiring wheels, it seems. Is it misplaced?

I'm reaching out today to human resources pros MPR's Public Insight Network on this issue. I'd love to be able to get some discussion going.

If you've been a position where you weren't quite sure if a job offer was made to you, post something below or contact me directly.

I'd also love to hear from the people who do the hiring. Do you end up dealing with prospects who try to pretend they got the job when you made it clear they did not?

I'll do some reporting on this over the next couple days and post on it next week. We really need MinnEcon readers to offer their insights and stories.

In the Smith case, the assistant, Jimmy Williams, quit his job at Oklahoma State believing Smith had offered him one at Minnesota. Smith said he'd never offered that job and didn't tell the assistant to quit.

Minnesota backed away from Williams after athletic director Joel Maturi pointed out NCAA recruiting violations in his past, according to the Associated Press.

The jury sided with the assistant. The U said afterward it stands behind Smith and is weighing an appeal.

(Streeter Lecka/Getty Images)

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Minnesota manufacturing jobs: A long climb back

Posted at 12:00 PM on May 21, 2010 by Paul Tosto (3 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

Two big pieces of employment news Thursday couldn't have been more jarring.

First came a hopeful sign for manufacturing in Minnesota's April unemployment data: 1,500 new positions and a fourth straight month of gains.

Hours later, Polaris Industries announced it would shut down a western Wisconsin plant.

Together, they got me thinking about the roller coaster ride manufacturing jobs have been on the past decade. A look at some long term data shows just how far we've fallen and the steep climb back.

Here's manufacturing employment since the recession began in December 2007.

That looks bad enough. But check out this chart of manufacturing employment since 1990 and you can feel your neck snap back as you contemplate the drop.

Here's a chart of monthly manufacturing employment, seasonally adjusted, since 1990, using federal Bureau of Labor Statistics Data.
(click on the chart for a larger view)

Looking at the charts, it's hard to believe Minnesota will find its way back on manufacturing. Employment in durable goods manufacturing (equipment, technology, machinery, etc.) is down nearly 30 percent from its peak in the 2000s (August 2000) -- more than 75,000 jobs gone.

During 2008, manufacturing boasted roughly 340,000 jobs -- 13 percent of the state's workforce, generating 15 percent of all wages paid.

Two years later, manufacturing's down below 300,000 jobs and 11 percent of the workforce.

A recent survey shows some optimism among the state's small and mid-sized manufacturers.

But it's a long road back to the summer of 2000 when some 400,000 Minnesotans were making things that built the economy.

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Got a different view or better data? Post below or contact us directly.

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Who's overpaid?

Posted at 12:00 PM on May 12, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

Are government workers overpaid compared to private sector employees?

That's the provocative question Chris Farrell, MPR's chief economics correspondent, asked recently on MinnEcon.

Now, that question's running just below the surface in the Minnesota budget crisis.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty recently called public employees "over-benefited and overpaid compared to their private-sector counterparts," the Rochester Post-Bulletin reported.

This issue is always a tough one to navigate. So in the weeks between Farrell's post and the governor's comments, we reached out to MPR's Public Insight Network to try and keep the conversation rolling.

We got some solid perspective from public and private sector Minnesotans.

"I would have been paid higher wages, but maybe had poorer benefits in the private sector. However, I was well compensated and have no regrets ... I believed in what I was doing and was having an impact on society and the environment.," said Loren Bergstedt, a retired civil engineer from Esko.

What people don't understand is that there are many very committed employees in the public sector. They are there because they believe in what they are doing. They have many frustrations with regulations and the bureaucracy. There is also the bad impression many have of public employees.

Many (most) of my conservative friends never really believed I was competent because if I was I wouldn't be a public employee.

Click on the map icons below to read what other Minnesotans told us, and then add your voice.

Brian Lueth, a credit union manager from Arden Hills, thought public and private sector wages were probably similar but that public employees enjoyed much better benefits -- "no guaranteed retirement and health care ends when I leave my job."

Farrell brought some national data to the debate that jibes with Lueth's insight.

"The wage gap isn't a worry. It largely reflects the rewards to education," Farrell wrote. "However, there is a big difference between the private sector and the public sector: Benefits. The recent trend shows a disturbing increase in government worker benefits vs. the private worker benefits."

Farrell's already sparked some good discussion.

Given the governor's comments and the current budget chaos, we don't see the issue disappearing any time soon.

So let's have at it. Post something below or contact us directly.

How do your wages and benefits compare to what you'd earn if you switched sectors? What should people understand when they discuss government wages and benefits versus private sector compensation?

If you could, what would tempt you to change sectors?

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Economic Lookout: Sacrifices in a 'jobless recovery'

Posted at 12:00 PM on May 11, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Economic Lookouts, Greater Minnesota, Jobs & unemployment

MinnEcon note: Jessica Sundheim gave us a view recently on the health of the economy in and around Fergus Falls. Today, she gives us a personal look at the jobless recovery and what it means for Ottertail County.

Interested in being an Economic Lookout? Contact us directly at MinnEcon.

Economic Lookout

Jessica Sundheim | Fergus Falls

A great deal of attention is paid to the want ads in our household. My husband has never really quit looking for a job since we moved here five years ago.

His current employment is not related to his educational background. With a bachelor's degree in biology and a teaching certificate, he is suited to be a naturalist in the field. For a few years he managed an environmental learning center, but the private funding was cut and we were back at square one.

Right now, my husband works for a company selling food door-to-door. He leaves around 8:30 a.m. and comes home at around 10:00 p.m.

When he started the position he made straight commission, which made for some interesting months. Over the years the company set up a more consistent pay structure in exchange for mandated quotas.

The hours are difficult for our family of six, but the job pays better than retail and includes benefits.

Yes, I single-mom it during the week. But harder than that is watching the dreams, hopes and aspirations of a person I dearly love slowly dwindle. Nearing forty, I feel that my husband is resigning himself to whatever the market will offer.

In rural communities teaching jobs are somewhat precarious because of declining enrollment and tight budgets.

Teachers who have the least amount of seniority are the first ones cut. The insecurity coupled with a very low starting salary has left my husband completely disillusioned with the idea of being a science teacher.

It's not just our family. Many of our friends have similar stories, although some offer hope. One friend stuck it out with a pop delivery job for years in order to keep their health insurance.

Others work alongside my husband and share job leads as they all compete for something with better hours and lower pay.

Another friend drove 45 miles back-and-forth for work until just recently when, after three years, he was able to find a job in his field, here in town.

There are often of jobs available in retail, service, and factories, but they all offer low wages and a high rate of turn over. Many do not include benefits. As a result, when my husband recently applied for a factory job with Cargill, there were quite a few applicants.

They first had to complete a series of personality type tests, and interviews followed for those who passed. Fifteen people, including my husband, were interviewed for two positions. The job entailed working a swing shift, 7 a.m.-7 p.m. or 7 p.m.- 7 a.m., with a few days off in between. It also required working all major holidays, but we were thrilled with the idea of my husband either finishing work at 7 p.m. or going into work at 7 p.m.

Twelve years ago, I could not have imagined him applying for this type of position, so far outside of his skill set.

However, today that position would translate into at least three hours of family time per day, plus having him home during the supper hour! The salary was similar to his current salary, except it offered annual increases in pay (not hours worked). The position also included benefits.

Unfortunately, my husband did not get the job, but he responded as he always does, by immediately getting back out there and combing the want ads.

I often hear speculation about whether this will be a "jobless" recovery. Lately, national numbers show businesses are hiring again, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that reflected in our local want ads.

There was a period of about a month this spring when there was nothing of note in the paper, and prior to that the ads were sparse. Though there is a seasonal fluctuation in employment in our area, the new job listings contain some real winners. Because health care is one of the area's biggest employers, most of the "good" jobs (living wages + benefits) require medical training.

Others also involve technical expertise -- computing, electrical engineering, agricultural background, or at least one year of experience in the field. The rest of the job openings are in retail / service industries (Pizza Hut needs servers) or in factories or processing plants (i.e. turkey production).

As a full-time student at our local community college, many of my colleagues are younger than 20 working toward nursing degrees, getting generals out of the way, or earning college credits while still in high school.

In one class, our instructor asked more than twenty-five students how many planned to stay in the area or return after completing their education.

I was stunned when I looked around the room and I was the only one with her hand raised.

This is a fabulous town with excellent schools and beautiful surroundings. Yet, how can I blame them? How many in my generation would have ever volunteered to work twelve to fifteen hour shifts and Saturdays, in careers far outside of our interests, for wages that offer lifestyles that pale in comparison to what our parents had at our ages?

I came out of the 1990's when a student went to college to earn her bachelor of arts degree with the encouragement of a bright future in whatever field she so desired.

My colleagues are far more savvy.

Many are highly specializing in technical fields that result in careers that cannot be exported, and hold no illusions of finding employment close to home.

Jessica Sundheim is a full-time student and mom

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A year-plus out of work. Finally, a job

Posted at 11:59 AM on May 7, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

Dale Petrie lost his accounting job in the recession and struggled to stay ahead of his debts. But something good's happened. He's found a job.

His story -- together with today's national data showing private sector job growth in April was the strongest in four years -- should give us all reason for a little hope.

Petrie, a source in MPR's Public Insight Network, let us document his uphill climb in the downturn. The St. Paulite saw his job end in February 2009 when the the company he worked for shut down.

We wanted to share his story for a couple reasons. He was kind enough to share the bad stuff so we wanted to make sure we highlighted something good!

Beyond that, his story tells us a little about how to get a job right now and that the changes people have made to cut back their spending may be permanent.

Over the winter, Petrie told us of being whacked by credit card companies and frustration competing with lots of qualified people for too few jobs.

"Basically it's a buyer's market right now, and the job search makes me feel like damaged goods," he said then. "I'm finding it harder than ever to land a job, or even an interview in this market, and every lead ends up being a dead end.

In March, he said he and his wife had slashed their budgets but were still taking on debt and exhausting credit lines. With jobless benefits running out, he worried he'd have to take a low-wage job outside his field.

It didn't happen. He dropped us a line a few days ago to tell us he'd be hired as an accountant by a local office of a major national financial company with total compensation better than his old job.

Petrie believes his success had less to do with the improving economy and more to do with the people who interviewed him. The interview, he said,

... had little to do with my qualifications in fact, most of that came through on my resume, but a lot of it was more to see if I'd be a good fit for the role and the environment, and I believe the first time I met with my new supervisor, he could see that my unusual career path was very similar to his.

We were often on the same wavelength about a number of things, and just as with other jobs where I clearly was just about as qualified as one could be, I was often passed over for another candidate, and I think a lot had to do with the other candidate, whether he/she fit the profile they were looking for more so than I did.

There will be changes in our lives...Today I think we feel fortunate and are intending to live more frugally, at least until we regain the financial security we once thought we had.

But instead of the difficult choice of whether to try to pay a credit card bill in full or let it ride, or not to have our leaking toilet repaired, we are now faced with good choices, like which of our health and dental plans should we opt into, etc.

In Minnesota, the employment picture for business and professional services is a lot better now than even six months ago.

In November, state officials reported that sector was down more than 20,000 jobs from the year before. By March, business and professional services returned to positive territory, although many of those were likely temp jobs.

We'll know more on May 20 when the state releases Minnesota's newest numbers.

And even though today's national data showed an uptick in unemployment, there's strong evidence companies are starting to be confident enough to hire.

Petrie's seen a lot of the best and worst of the recessionary economy. In some ways things are better but "I think it's still very stagnant and it is only by sheer luck that I managed to find a role that fit me so well."

I guess what I take from that is that even when everybody seems to be downsizing, there are still some areas where things are growing, there is some new job creation happening, and maybe it's happening with the larger companies first.

I'm not so sure things are going to start turning around for everyone just yet. This job I received was a newly created position which took the company 4 months from the time I first talked to them until they actually offered me the position, and I had actually already stopped expecting to ever hear back from them when I got the offer.

I still see a lot of suffering out there, a lot of turmoil, and it feels to me like maybe we're not losing a bunch of jobs anymore, but the ones we lost haven't really started to come back yet....These economic wounds won't heal quickly for employees OR employers...

Looking back, he says, "Were it not for my wife's 1/2 time employment which she attained shortly before I lost my job, I don't know where my family and I (self, wife, 8 1/2 year old son) would be. I had been laid off many times before, but had never experienced a stint of unemployment anywhere near this duration."

His wife, a part-time librarian, also found new work in her field that will allow her to work nearly full-time hours.

Petrie and his wife start their new positions on Monday.

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Your career. What happened? Your stories

Posted at 12:00 PM on April 29, 2010 by Paul Tosto (1 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment, MinnEcon Indicator

We asked you recently to tell us what the recession's done to your career and we asked you to write short.

Really, really short. Six words, precisely.

MinnEcon readers flooded us with creative responses from practical ("Raise? +0%, Insurance? +26%. Tough year.") to sadly philosophical ("Insurance, overtime, vacation. Unhappy; stifling dreams.") to surprisingly upbeat ("Career colleges booming. Job is safe.")

So then we threw the question to MPR's Public Insight Network, asking for their six word career stories -- and the story behind those words. Once again our sources gave us a vivid view on the recession. (You can add your voice here.)

3 jobs rolled into one.

That's how Susanna Patterson of Stillwater summed her career in the past year or so.

"Layoffs at our company have the 'survivors' filling in the gaps created by our less-fortunate colleagues," she wrote. Her job(s): "Secretary, accounting, receptionist, sample department, etc., etc., etc...."

Art. What art? Why buy art?

Minneapolis painter Christi Furnas said she learned that,"after the housing bubble popped, having walls was more important for people than finding original art to hang on them." She's confident, though things will pick up.

Here's one that surprised us: Churches hurting, want younger male pastor

"The large number of baby boomers who are pastors are having trouble finding calls because they are too expensive," wrote Karen Grandall, a pastor from Spring Valley. "As one council member said, 'Why have a Cadillac when we can get a Chevy?' We have to take part time in order to find something."

Click on the map icons to read stories of how the recession's affected the professional lives of your friends and neighbors.

The recession turned into a blessing for some, a chance to change gears professionally.

"I was laid off from my job as a blogger for a web development firm but have found a new career as a freelance writer. Best thing to ever happen," said Jodi Chromey of Shakopee, who threw a bit of math in her headline: 11 months of cube-free freelance > 9-5 cube dwelling

Kevin Sweeney of St. Paul feels like he's had some job security in this recession.

"I work in corrections and unfortunately, a small minority of people have just not figured out how to live honestly and peacefully with their neighbors. They keep breaking the laws and I keep my job. It's really too bad things are that way," said Sweeney, a juvenile probation worker who summed up his career: Still have one and APPRECIATE it!

Others told us how their lives changed when the recession torpedoed career plans of family members.

Mothering with family in the basement.

That's how Meeka Urlaub, a stay at home mom and international education worker in Minneapolis summed up her experience. "My sister-in-law and her family have moved into our basement, since her husband has been out of work for over a year."

Job-wise, there wasn't much to applaud in the most recent Minnesota unemployment numbers. We'll get the next set of numbers May 20. But experts have told us not to keep our job growth expectations low in 2010.

Maybe the hardest story to read came from Charles Oakes of Willmar. He told us he manages a community rehabilitation program that finds jobs for adults with disabilities.

"I have laid off staff, cut benefits, reduced wages, increased co-pays, and canceled most training and memberships. I have disappointed more employees & friends in the last 18 months than in my entire 30 year career in nonprofit management," he wrote.

"I have personally had my pay and benefits reduced too for things that we have no control over at all."

He summed up his experience in six-plus words: Nonprofit leader, hatchet man now. Woe is us...

Post your six words below or drop us a line.

BONUS: Check out the responses we've received on MPR's Facebook page

NOTE: Our efforts were inspired by SMITH Magazine's ongoing Six-Word Memoir project. SMITH and our public media colleagues across the country are exploring six-word economy stories. Check it out.

Also, read the newest entries at SMITH -- 6 words on the financial crisis.

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Paid internships a road out of recession?

Posted at 12:00 PM on April 26, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

AKA desperate recent grad.

That's how Tayler Anderson signed off her email to us last fall.

She was a new college graduate who, like so many other young adults in this recession, couldn't find work in her chosen field. She was working part-time at a Bath and Body Works to pay the bills.

This morning, Tayler's mom emailed with some good news: Tayler found a way to earn some money and get a foothold on her career. The graphic design major snagged a paid internship with Columbia Sportswear.

Celia Gust told us her daughter's leading a fabric design effort for baby and girls clothing at Columbia. "It's not typical that an intern would be made the lead designer, but Tayler has gotten rave reviews for her work from management."

It is an internship, of course. It comes with minimal pay and no benefits, but "at least it's full time," Celia Gust said. "There is the hope and promise that it will convert into a 'real' job at the end of the internship in September. "

Tayler's story has us wondering if the paid internship is taking on a vital role for new grads in this recession -- a bridge to the recovering economy.

We ran across this intriguing data from the job site SimplyHired.com

While "paid internship" is still a relatively small part of its offerings, it notes that listings for paid internships are up 141 percent since August 2008.

4/27 UPDATE: SimplyHired.com says its jobs database consists of about three million U.S. job listings, so the .06% of matching jobs on the chart translates to about 1,800 paid internship offers at the end of February.

We tend to think of internships, even paid ones, as a nice add-on to a resume or a way to pick up some extra money. But maybe the Great Recession is restructuring the path between college and the workforce.

We're following up with Simplyhired.com and some other places to see if Tayler's experience is becoming more the norm.

If you have some thoughts on this, drop us a line.

"You can imaging how proud of her I am," said Celia Gust, a source in MPR's Public Insight Network. "Let's just hope this all translates into something permanent."

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Economic Lookout: At Duluth job club, a portrait of unemployed

Posted at 12:00 PM on April 23, 2010 by Paul Tosto (0 Comments)
Filed under: Economic Lookouts, Greater Minnesota, Jobs & unemployment, MinnEcon Indicator

MinnEcon note: JP Rennquist told us in December he was "new to unemployment" but working his contacts and staying positive. In his first Economic Lookout report, he gives us a look at the challenges of being jobless in Duluth and the hope for better days.

Interested in being an Economic Lookout? Contact us directly at MinnEcon.

Economic Lookout
JP Rennquist | Duluth

Monday Morning Job Club, Duluth. After a six week hiatus I finally returned to job club last week. And it had grown.

The club is a semi-formal gathering of unemployed people led by staff from the Minnesota workforce center and the city of Duluth workforce development program.

We had our biggest group ever.

That may have been due to the fact that we had a recruiter from Thrivent Financial for Lutherans looking to fill a few spots in its newly expanded Duluth office.

Or it may have been just that unemployment keeps rising here in Duluth, in spite of a few glimmers of hope .

I started coming to job club after I lost my non-profit job last November. It draws people from the old economy (teachers, manufacturers, construction workers) and the new economy (writers, web developers, telemarketers).

Some are displaced homemakers dealing with an empty nest, a divorce or the loss of a primary wage-earner in their family. Some are ex-prisoners navigating the difficult passage from incarceration to independence. Others are baby boomers nearing the end of their professional careers or young adults at the dawn of their working lives.

One man is trying to get back into the workforce after taking six years off to be a stay at home dad to his special needs daughter, who is now in school. Another guy, a recent addition who showed up during my hiatus, got laid off by Sam's Club when they outsourced their food samplers to an outside firm.

The structure is pretty simple: start with who you are and the kind of work you have done or what you might be interested in doing, later we go around the tables again and share the results from our efforts or things we'd like help with. If there is time, we share goals for the next week. Along the way there is a lot of conversation and, perhaps surprisingly, a lot of laughter.

There is definitely a lifeboat philosophy there - people realize that everyone is essentially in the same boat and they offer lots of support, encouragement and ideas to other job seekers.

Each person gets a piece of heavy card stock paper to write their name on and put in front of them on the table.

When I started coming, the name cards fit neatly in two rows on just one table. Now they cover almost two full tables. There is a stack of cards about 2 inches high for people who have been gone for awhile, either for jobs or other distractions. That's where I found mine.

I had gotten a job but instead of a new career it turned into a temporary position. They couldn't afford me, "after all," the owner said, sales were in a real slump.

I was a little embarrassed to go back after telling everyone I had a job. The people at job club were sorry to hear that my job didn't work out, but they were also happy to welcome me back.

Most of them had been through something similar before.

In March Duluth's Advanstar communications announced they were laying off 100 employees. Well, they weren't just laying them off, the company, which specializes in publishing, events and web design, said it was outsourcing them to a company in Asia.

Some of those outsourced employees have already been to job club even though their severance packages run through the summer.

Being unemployed is not fun in this job market, it's a real challenge, it's demoralizing and sometimes it seems like it's never gonna end.

But for me, and a thick stack of other attendees, Monday morning job club at least makes the job search much more bearable, and for some people who have come and moved on now, it's helped to make their searches successful.

JP Rennquist describes himself as "pretty broke" but with a million-dollar view of Lake Superior from his modest home in Duluth's Central Hillside neighborhood. He runs a couple of micro-businesses out of his house, does a lot of volunteering and is "waiting for his ship to come in."

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Your career. What happened? Six words.

Posted at 3:00 PM on April 13, 2010 by Paul Tosto (40 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment

We'll remember the Great Recession for the way it reached into Minnesota's middle-income homes and put many professionals out of work for the first time.

We've talked to scores of people in MPR's Public Insight Network who hoped a college degree and knowledge-based economy would insulate them from the downturn. It didn't.

So how's the recession treating your chosen work?

Tell us in six words.

We've been doing six-word challenges lately with good feedback. We asked folks to sum up their recession experiences and to tell us about their health care coverage.

We got creative, heartfelt responses that we've posted and shared with our public media friends across the country at economystory.org.

We'll do the same with your six-word entries on the recession and your profession.

Here are some posted already at economystory.org:

"Lost two jobs gained an LLC"

"Take work when you're offered it."

"Adjust to reality, give up dreams."

Here are my six words: Journalism reaper. Step ahead. So far.

That pretty much sums up my professional life the past two years -- happy and lucky to have a job writing and reporting and hoping it stays that way.

How about you? What words best describe what's happened to your career in this recession? Unemployed? New entrepreneur? Back to school to retrain?

Post your six words below or drop us a line.

BONUS: Check out the responses we're getting to this on MPR's Facebook page

NOTE: Our efforts were inspired by SMITH Magazine's ongoing Six-Word Memoir project.

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Your six word recession: heartwrenching, funny, revealing

Posted at 12:00 PM on March 25, 2010 by Paul Tosto (7 Comments)
Filed under: Jobs & unemployment, MinnEcon Indicator

You did it. You captured the pain, wry humor and resilience of surviving the Great Recession. In six words (mostly).

I wasn't sure what we'd get when we asked MinnEcon readers and Minnesotans in MPR's Public Insight Network to describe their recession experience in six words. More than 150 200 responded.

You gave us a revealing look at life in Minnesota in this recession. Let's keep it going. If you haven't tried it yet, give it a shot and describe your recession in six words.

My colleague Molly Bloom was intrigued by these responses from our Network:

"Holding my breath, survivor's guilt, re-evaluating," wrote Shane Baker, a Rochester teacher.

"I've fallen and I can't get back up (yet)," said Todd Lewandoski a former airline pilot from West. St. Paul. "Very profitable airline suddenly closed," he added. "Airline retirement raised from sixty to sixty five combined with the economy means no jobs for at least two more years." He's now pursuing a nursing degree.

Check out the wordle that Steve Mullis, MPR's associate online editor, built from the responses we got from our Network, from the Web site posts and from responses this morning to MPR's Today's Question.