{"id":884558,"date":"2026-10-16T17:04:17","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T17:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/884558\/"},"modified":"2026-10-16T17:04:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T17:04:17","slug":"minnesota-lost-jobs-in-september-unemployment-rate-ticked-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/884558\/","title":{"rendered":"Minnesota lost jobs in September, unemployment rate ticked up"},"content":{"rendered":"

Quick Read<\/p>\n

Minnesota lost 4,600 jobs in September and the state\u2019s unemployment rate rose to 4.5 percent. <\/p>\n

New monthly data<\/a> from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development shows what officials are again calling a \u201cmixed bag.\u201d Month-to-month labor market figures generally declined and stagnated, but Minnesota is still outpacing the rest of the country on some metrics, including job growth, over the year. <\/p>\n

One notable exception is wages, which have stayed flat in Minnesota since last September while prices have risen by 3.7 percent, according to the latest Consumer Price Index<\/a>. That means workers in the state have lost purchasing power. Wages grew by 2.9 percent nationally.<\/p>\n

DEED Labor Market Information Director Angelina Nguyen said that could be a result of how Minnesota\u2019s labor force has been changing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe job growth that we’ve seen happened to be in industries that tend to pay lower, like education and healthcare services, or retail, or leisure and hospitality,\u201d she said. \u201cSo the way job growth is distributed may be holding down the average hourly earnings.\u201d<\/p>\n

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. <\/p>\n

The state lost a total of 4,600 nonfarm jobs last month on a seasonally-adjusted basis while the country saw a small increase in jobs. The state\u2019s unemployment rate rose to 4.5 percent and the nation\u2019s grew to 4.2 percent.<\/p>\n

During that same time, the state\u2019s labor force grew by about 800 people. That’s basically 0 percent, but officials tout that it marks a break in a nine-month fall in the number of Minnesotans working or looking for work. <\/p>\n

That figure has fallen by more than 34,000 people since last September, or a little over one percent. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the state\u2019s labor force participation rate, or the percentage of the population who are working or looking for work, fell last month. It\u2019s down to 66.7 percent compared to 68.1 percent last year.<\/p>\n

“We are puzzled,\u201d Nguyen said. \u201cIn terms of jobs growth, Minnesota is doing fine. There’s something going on with our labor force that we don’t yet have enough data to put a finger on why we are seeing worsening labor force stats.”<\/p>\n

DEED Commissioner Matt Varilek said the labor force could be taking a hit because of the surge in immigration enforcement earlier this year. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou would expect that that would cause some people leaving the state who were impacted by Metro Surge, and therefore also leaving the labor market,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

He also said Minnesota\u2019s population is aging and foreign-born workers typically help supplement retiring workers. But that\u2019s not happening as much anymore. <\/p>\n

\u201cAs international immigration policy has been changed radically by the federal government, we now have far fewer folks arriving in Minnesota from foreign locations,\u201d he said. \u201cTherefore the thing that was offsetting our aging workforce is no longer doing so.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Quick Read Minnesota lost 4,600 jobs in September and the state\u2019s unemployment rate rose to 4.5 percent. New…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":884559,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,101],"class_list":["post-884558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884558","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=884558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/884559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=884558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=884558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=884558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}