MN adds nearly 45,000 jobs in past year

Minnesota’s unemployment rate increased a tenth of a point in February to 4.8 percent. That compares to 5.5 percent in February a year ago. Officials say employers cut only 100 jobs during February. The Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED)

 also revised its January report to reflect a gain of 800 jobs. That increased total job growth in the state over the past year to 44,714, for a growth rate of 1.6 percent.

The department also says the state’s labor force participation rate climbed .2 percent for the second consecutive month to reach 70.5 percent. The two-month gain was the biggest jump in the labor force participation rate in 13 years. Minnesota is now 5,200 participants shy of having a record 3 million people in its labor force.

“While job growth slowed last month, most Minnesota employment sectors are well ahead of where they were a year ago,” said DEED Commissioner Katie Clark Sieben. “Manufacturing added jobs for the fifth month in a row, and construction is growing at more than three times the national pace.”

Job gains last month were in education and health services (up 1,300), professional and business services (up 1,300), leisure and hospitality (up 900), manufacturing (up 300), construction (up 300) and mining and logging (up 100).

Job losses were in information (down 1,000), government (down 1,000), trade, transportation and utilities (down 1,000), financial activities (down 800) and other services (down 500).

Over the past year, education and health services led all sectors with 13,433 new jobs. Other job gains were in trade, transportation and utilities (up 8,311), construction (up 6,766), manufacturing (up 6,541), professional and business services (up 5,591), other services (up 3,104), leisure and hospitality (up 2,908), information (up 683) and logging and mining (up 121).

Over-the-year job losses were in government (down 1,618) and financial activities (down 1,126).

In the state Metropolitan Statistical Areas, job gains occurred in the past 12 months in the Mankato MSA (up 2.4 percent), St. Cloud MSA (up 2.3 percent), Minneapolis-St. Paul MSA (up 1.2 percent), Duluth-Superior MSA (up 0.8 percent) and the Rochester MSA (up 0.4 percent).