Some recent headlines read:
MPR News: Minnesota adds nearly 6,000 jobs but unemployment increases
Star Tribune: The U.S. labor market is slowing. Minnesota, for now, is bucking the trend
Kare 11: MN workforce, job numbers rise in August — but so does unemployment
KEYC: Jobs Report: Minnesota adds jobs in August, unemployment rate grows slightly
Mankato Free Press: August jobs grow 4.2% in Mankato, topping state, U.S. trends
Detroit Lake Online: Minnesota jobs and workforce grow in August
So, job growth was up — outpacing the United States generally — but so was unemployment, how does that work?
Job growth in Minnesota in the short and the long run
First, it is true that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows the number of “Total Nonfarm” jobs in Minnesota increasing by 5,900 from July to August. It is also true that this rate of growth — 0.2% — was faster than that of the United States generally, 0.0%. Gov. Walz was quick to celebrate both facts:
But the comparison is not so favorable over the longer term. BLS data also show, as seen in Figure 1, from 2018 to 2025 (using the average of the months to August) the number of “Total Nonfarm” jobs in Minnesota has grown by 2.8% compared to 7.0% for the United States as a whole; more than double our state’s rate.
Figure 1: Growth in “Total Nonfarm” jobs, 2018=100
Last week we looked at how Gov. Walz’ record on per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth compared with that of his predecessors, Tim Pawlenty and Mark Dayton. How does his record compare on job growth?
We saw above that, over Gov. Walz’ period in office (2018 to 2025), job growth in Minnesota has been 4.2 percentage points below that of the United States generally (7.0 – 2.8). When we do the same calculation for governors Pawlenty (2002 to 2010) and Dayton (2010 to 2018), we see, in Figure 2, that while Gov. Pawlenty underperformed by 0.8 percentage points and Gov. Dayton by 2.4, job growth under neither lagged the United States so badly as under Gov. Walz, by that 4.2 percentage points.
Figure 2: Difference between job growth in the United States and Minnesota, percentage points
This tells a very similar story to the GDP numbers. While Minnesota lagging the United States is nothing new, it is a situation that has deteriorated under Gov. Walz.