Employment Trends and Projections for Minnesota and its Substate Development Regions

Abstract

Changing patterns of employment in Minnesota and its 13 development regions are examined in this report. Industry employment change is discussed in terms of the industry distribution of employment, the sources of employment change, and the interrelationships between the economic base and total employment change. Economic base refers to export producing industry, specifically, the employment engaged in producing goods and services which are bought by non-residents. An indirect method of measurement is used in deriving the economic base of Minnesota and its 13 development regions. Employment in excess of the national average in each industry is derived as a surrogate for export-producing employment. This measurement of the economic base shows the declining importance of agriculture and agriculture-related industries in each sub-state region. While agriculture and agriculture-related employment is declining, non-agricultural manufacturing and service industry employment is increasing. Five above-average growth industries are projected to increase from 47.4 percent of total excess employment in 1970 to 74.8 percent of the total in the year 2000. Total industry employment is derived with a shift and-share model. I n this projection method, the total change in employment is partitioned into three sources: the national-growth effect, the industry-mix effect, and the regional-share effect. The shifts in total employment from dependence on agriculture to dependence on manufacturing and services are forecast by the industry-mix and the regional-share effects in the shift-and-share forecasting approach.