The Truth About Jobs in Minnesota

When you start digging into job statistics, you quickly realize how some of the obscure methods of collecting and reporting the data allow for all kinds of misleading reporting.  Here is a great example, the Star Tribune here in Minnesota, the official newspaper of the Dem party in the state, breathlessly reported last week that Minnesota added “jobs” in August.  John Phelan from the Center for the American Experiment did great work in disentangling this typical piece of Strib garbage.   (Am. Ex. Post)

Here is the crux of the issue.  You have to distinguish between “jobs” and “employed persons”.  They are not identical, largely because there are many people with more than one job, particularly those working two or more part-time jobs.  So you can have an increase in jobs, and actually see a decline in employed persons.  And in some circumstances, an increase in “jobs”, if they are largely part-time, may actually reflect negatively on the economy.

So what is the truth about employment in Minnesota.  Yep, we have more jobs, all part-time.  Even at that, our job growth during the Walz regime has been lower than in the country overall.  But more important, and consistent with people fleeing the state, in August we had 6000 fewer employed persons, despite the supposed job growth.  And since April of this year we have over 25,000 fewer employed persons.  In fact, we have the same number of employed persons now that we did in 2019–no employment growth in over five years.  So the labor market and the business environment in Minnesota is extremely weak, all thanks to the Incompetent Blowhard.