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Job News
2012
Looking for a Job? Your Odds Are Getting Better
If you're out there looking for a job in Minnesota, you should be feeling a little better about your prospects. While it's still a competitive labor market, the numbers are going in your favor. In the fourth quarter of 2011, job openings in the state—jobs employers are actively trying to fill—reached 50,000.… Read MORE.
2011
Number of Underemployed is Stubbornly High
Layoffs have tapered off and the unemployment rate is slowly dropping. But not counted in the official jobless rate is a persistently high number of people working part-time jobs who would gladly work full-time if they had the chance.… Read MORE.
Job Creation Takes Center Stage in Minnesota Budget Battle
ST. PAUL—A state government shutdown is looming as Gov. Mark Dayton and the Republican-controlled Legislature remain deadlocked on how to close Minnesota's budget deficit. The GOP says Dayton's plan to raise taxes on the wealthiest 2 percent would kill jobs. Kris Jacobs, executive director of the Jobs Now Coalition, says the opposite is true… Read MORE.
Budget Would Stall Slowly Churning Economic Engine
Minnesota lawmakers are putting finishing touches on a conservative-crafted budget that could toss the state back to the brink of recession, further kick the foundation out of housing prices, and speed rural Minnesota's out−migration.… Read MORE.
An Uphill Fight to Help Workers Get Decent Pay
Last month the city of St. Paul agreed to contribute almost $2 million toward the expansion of Cossetta's, a popular Italian restaurant near the Xcel Energy Center, that will eventually result in the equivalent of 100 new full-time jobs by 2015. At the restaurant owner's insistence, though, the city waived a requirement that he pay current and future employees, full- and part-time, a "living wage"… Read MORE.
Retail Adds Jobs, But Is It a Career?
Erin Abell left a job in finance to volunteer for John McCain's presidential campaign in early 2008. She had hoped to return to the industry after the election, but by then Wall Street was on life support, and Abell had to live off credit cards until joining a friend's startup. So she started working part-time at Banana Republic to help cut her debts. Yet Abell was paid less at age 30 than she made in a retail job in her early 20s… Read MORE.
Degrees and Dollars
It is a truth universally acknowledged that education is the key to economic success. Everyone knows that the jobs of the future will require ever higher levels of skill. That's why, in an appearance Friday with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, President Obama declared that "If we want more good news on the jobs front then we've got to make more investments in education." But what everyone knows is wrong… Read MORE.
Minnesota Job Openings Up More Than 30 Percent in 4Q
Job openings in Minnesota climbed 30.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010 from the same period a year ago. Employers reported 33,800 openings, compared with 25,900 openings in the fourth quarter of 2009, the latest state report shows… Read MORE.
57,000 Minnesota Jobs at Risk Under Proposed Korean Trade Pact
Approximately 57,000 Minnesotans work in industries that a US government study identifies as at risk of being off-shored should a proposed trade pact with South Korea be enacted. According the US International Trade Commission, the proposed trade agreement will increase the US global trade deficit… Read MORE.
Minnesota Loses 22,400 Jobs in December
December was a downer for Minnesota's job market as employers slashed 22,400 jobs, the latest evidence of an anemic economic recovery's struggle to ignite sustained job creation… Read MORE.
Is It Time to Bring Back MEED?
In the past decade, Minnesota has added only 35,000 jobs, compared to 440,000 jobs the decade before… With no relief in sight for Minnesota's jobless, labor expert Kris Jacobs, executive director of the JOBS NOW Coalition, suggests it's time to bring back Minnesota Emergency Employment Development… Read MORE.
2010
Different Race, Different Recession: American Indian Unemployment in 2010
There are two very different experiences of the recession in some regions of the country. While Alaska and the Northern Plains states have had some of the lowest unemployment rates for whites since the start of the recession, these regions have had among the highest rates of joblessness for American Indians.… Read MORE.
Statement on National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform Proposals
Senator Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles appeared to have largely ignored economic reality in developing the proposals they presented to the public today. The country is suffering from 9.6 percent unemployment with more than 25 million people unemployed, underemployed or who have given up looking for work altogether… Read MORE.
Top Group Takes Large Slice of Income Growth
Income growth over the last few decades has been enormously unbalanced, and this must be taken into account as the nation considers shifts in tax policy and develops a fiscal plan that strengthens the recovery and targets a sustainable deficit. According to the Congressional Budget Office, between 1979 and the start of the current recession in 2007, the pre-tax incomes of the upper 1 percent grew 214 percent… Read MORE.
State and Local Job Losses Threaten Recovery
Two years ago, state and local governments began shedding workers as they struggled to balance their budgets. What began as a trickle of job losses is becoming a flood. A total of more than 300,000 state and local government jobs have been lost since August 2008, with 48,000 payroll jobs cut last month alone… Read MORE.
Staples Shows a Visitor its Resilience and Friendliness
The house my grandfather lived and died in sits on a corner of what used to be Hwy. 10 in Staples. Once a spotless two-story with a small garden and a row of lilac bushes kept neatly trimmed by my fastidious Danish ancestors, the house now sags at the corners and desperately needs a coat of paint… Though there are signs of economic recovery in the Twin Cities, pockets of Minnesota have fallen deeper and remain battered by the recession… Read MORE.
2009
Minnesota May Be on Path to Recovery, But Where Are the Jobs?
The Dow Jones Industrial Average has flirted with 10,000 points. US manufacturing, exports and home sales are showing signs of life. The economy is growing again, but it's failing by one critical measure: jobs. It's being billed as the jobless recovery, and it isn't sparing Minnesota workers… Read MORE.
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