Minnesota jobless rate edges up to 2% in September, but state adds jobs
FILE PHOTO: Help wanted signs. (R.J. Johnston/Toronto Star via Getty Images) (Getty Images)
ST. PAUL, Minn. (FOX 9) - Minnesota employers added 4,200 jobs in September while the unemployment rate ticked up to 2%, which remains near an all-time low.
Thursday's release was the final one before the Nov. 8 election. The monthly jobs data give voters a picture of where the state's economy is headed.
The private sector added an estimated 8,500 jobs in September. Education services led the way with 3,200 new hires. Professional and business services added 1,600 jobs, and leisure and hospitality gained 1,400. Government lost 4,300 jobs. Private-sector hiring in Minnesota was slower than the U.S. as a whole for the month.
"It remains a tight labor market and one we think is really full of opportunity right now," Steve Grove, the state's economic development commissioner, told reporters. "It doesn’t seem a lot of employers are giving up on that need to hire in the aggregate."
Minnesota has one of the tightest labor markets of any state. There were 192,000 job openings in August, according to the latest data available from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, compared with roughly 60,000 unemployed workers.
Minnesota's labor force participation rate ticked down for the third month in a row, to 68.1%, though it remains far higher than the national average. Labor force participation rate is a measure of people working or unemployed and looking for work. It doesn't count people who've retired or are staying home with children.
Inflation continued to outpace average private-sector wage gains in September, though the gap narrowed from previous months. Wages grew an average of 5.7% statewide, while inflation was 7.4% in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area – the only local region tracked by the federal government.