A report released Wednesday by the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce warns that the state\u2019s economy is \u201closing ground\u201d compared to the rest of the nation.<\/p>\n
The Chamber of Commerce announced that it has launched a multi-year initiative, dubbed the \u201cEconomic Imperative for Growth,\u201d to reverse the findings of the report.<\/p>\n
According to the report, Minnesota\u2019s GDP per capita has grown 1.0% annually since 2019, while the national average is 1.8%. <\/p>\n
The state\u2019s labor force only increased 0.2% annually, leaving nearly two jobs per job seeker, the report found. Minnesota\u2019s labor force growth ranked 40th nationally.<\/p>\n
Additionally, the report found that from 2020 to 2024, nearly 48,000 more people left Minnesota than moved here, ranking the state 41st nationally.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese stats should serve as a wake-up call,\u201d said Doug Loon, president and CEO of the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce.\u00a0\u201cWe cannot hide from the realities of our economic position. We can both celebrate what\u2019s great and confront the barriers that hold us back. It\u2019s time to restore our competitiveness and create opportunity here in Minnesota.\u201d<\/p>\n
When asked what\u2019s led up to the decline, Loon said, \u201cComes back to a few fundamental realities of our economy and our state. We have a demographic challenge. We\u2019re an aging population. We\u2019re not replacing ourselves as fast as we want to order, and we\u2019re not seeing the migration to Minnesota that we once enjoyed. So you put those things together, we have this challenges with our population,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s not all.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur regulatory and tax environment, are burdens on business expansion and investment,\u201d Loon added.<\/p>\n
As for solutions, Loon stated, \u201cWe need to make sure we\u2019re an affordable state, that we\u2019re welcome to people moving here and helping them find a career and opportunity here in the state. This is all about economic opportunity for Minnesotans and non-Minnesotans to be in Minnesota,\u201d he said. These are challenges for us we need to think about. That also relates to our tax code. Are we going to always be a high tax state? Taxes are almost every aspect of our economy? That is a challenge that many times, pushes investments and people away from Minnesota. So then, there are also our regulatory environment. We\u2019ve been working hard at the chamber to come up with a better way, more efficiently, to deliver regulations to the state, as opposed to creating barriers to regulations.\u201d<\/p>\n
You can view the full report below: <\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFor Related Stories:\u00a0Economy<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0Money Matters<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A report released Wednesday by the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce warns that the state\u2019s economy is \u201closing ground\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,101,82103],"class_list":{"0":"post-302659","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-money-matters"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}