Every year, students graduate from high schools across Greater Minnesota, beginning the transition to adulthood. Some continue on to college, others enter the workforce directly, and many move between education and work in the years that follow. Over time, these early transitions shape not only the individuals’ careers but also the region’s labor force, economic stability, and long-term population trends.
To better understand this important point in young people’s lives, we undertook the project of examining what happens to Minnesota’s high school graduates after they leave the K–12 system. Rather than focusing on a single point in time, however, we used data to follow graduates for more than a decade after high school. We did this to see if we could identify large patterns in how postsecondary education, workforce participation, and geographic mobility unfold over time and to see if we could discern decisions that put people on particular pathways. The goal was not to explain individual decisions or assign cause, but to gain insight into how education systems and workforce systems intersect in practice.
This report looks at high school graduates from Northeast Minnesota who graduated between 2008 and 2023. During our analysis, three broad patterns, or “pathways,” emerged from the data.
- The Postsecondary Credential Earner Pathway: Just under half of high school graduates (48%) completed some kind of postsecondary credential. Among these “credential earners,” a majority of them went on to stable, consistent workforce participation. Where they earned that credential strongly influenced whether they stayed in or returned to their home region or went elsewhere for work.
- The Workforce-First Pathway: Others entered the workforce directly without earning a credential. Among these students, Career and Technical Education programs in high school were the clearest differentiator between those who found consistent, stable employment within the region and those who didn’t.
- The Disconnected Pathway: A third group experienced persistent disconnection from both postsecondary education and sustained employment, a condition that, for many, does not resolve on its own and is shaped by structural barriers that begin well before high school graduation.
Understanding that these distinct pathways exist — and what they mean — matters for regional planning and workforce development. Treating where students go after high school as if each were on a random, unique path that started the day after graduation hides the fact that there are a few large-scale patterns that connect high school to the workforce. Looking instead at the pathways students actually grouped into gives a clearer picture of how they ended up where they did.
About the Data
This analysis draws on linked administrative data provided by the state. Using anonymized records, we were able to connect data across systems, creating a longitudinal view of educational pathways and employment outcomes after high school that wasn’t visible before. Three primary data sources were used:
High School Records. Courses taken; participation in CTE; Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment and ACT test scores; and indicators for special populations such as students of color, students in special education, or those qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch. Together, these records described students’ academic preparation and learning experiences prior to graduation.
Postsecondary Records. Enrollment, persistence, and completion data drawn from Minnesota’s public higher education systems and the National Student Clearinghouse. These records capture both in-state and out-of-state attendance and identify the types and locations of institutions students attended.
Employment Records. Wage and employment records from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) captured employment within Minnesota, including hours worked, employer attachment, and indicators of job stability. Employment outside Minnesota was not directly observed.
Tracking Outcomes Over Time
Each graduate’s workforce and/or education status was assessed every year after high school. Rather than looking at a single point in time, we tracked patterns across multiple years after high school graduation, with particular attention to outcomes at Year 1 (short-term transition), Year 5 (mid-term attachment to an employer or career), and Year 10 (longer-term employment patterns). This reduced the influence of short-term fluctuations and highlighted relationships that held up over time.
Each year, individuals were assigned to one of five mutually exclusive categories, based on their situation at the time:
Sustained Workforce Participation—Northeast (Regional Employment). Worked 1,000 hours or more that year with a single employer in the Northeast Minnesota region — stable, in-region employment. This is the employment situation most directly tied to the region’s own economy: it represents a graduate’s labor and skills directly benefiting Northeast Minnesota.
Sustained Workforce Participation—MN. Worked 1,000 or more hours that year with a single employer elsewhere in Minnesota — stable employment, but outside the region. This category reflects a “leakage” of workforce investment: the graduate is stably employed, but the region isn’t the one benefiting. It’s central to understanding regional retention.
Non-sustained Workforce Participation. Had a record of Minnesota employment but fell short of the sustained threshold of 1,000 hours and wasn’t enrolled in postsecondary education. They typically worked part-time or intermittently. While it may have been by choice, this can signal underemployment or economic instability, which matters for workforce development planning.
Attending Postsecondary. Enrolled in postsecondary education without meeting the sustained employment threshold — often full-time students or those newly transitioning out of high school. This category represents continued investment in education rather than disengagement since many move into the workforce categories in later years.
No Minnesota Employment Record, Not Attending Postsecondary. No observed MN employment or enrollment record for the year. Includes people working in other states, in the military or other federal employment, the self-employed, a stay-at-home parent, or someone otherwise outside the labor force. This category mixes very different situations — an out-of-state career move looks the same in the data as true disconnection from work and school — so it needs to be interpreted carefully rather than treated as a single “disconnected” outcome.
The Findings: Paths Taken by High School Graduates
Finding 1: Where students went after high school
Figure 2 charts how many Northeast Minnesota students ended up in each of the five categories each year after high school.
For many students, the first step was further education. In the first year after graduation, nearly half of Northeast Minnesota’s graduates enrolled in a postsecondary institution, whether a local community college, a technical program, or a four-year university. Another 21% were in the non-sustained workforce category, not surprising for recent high school graduates; 15% had sustained employment in the region, while 4% had sustained employment somewhere else in Minnesota, and 12% had no Minnesota employment record.
These percentages shift over time, however. At Year 5, most high school graduates had completed their postsecondary journeys and settled into more stable employment patterns. The distribution in Northeast Minnesota was approximately 27% in sustained workforce participation within the region, 15% sustained workforce participation elsewhere in Minnesota, and 21% in non-sustained workforce participation. Roughly 21% had no Minnesota employment record.
By Year 10, the percentage of high school grads with sustained employment in the Northeast region had stabilized at about 29%. However, the share with no Minnesota employment record had grown to 32%, likely reflecting a combination of out-of-state employment/outmigration, and people still in the region but persistently disconnected from the labor force.
Finding 2: Three Distinct Pathways
The next step in our analysis was to better understand how students ended up in their respective categories. Within the data, a surprisingly consistent pattern of three broad “pathways” emerged. The pathways students ended up on depended on their plans, choices and structural opportunities and barriers in high school and even earlier. These factors correlated highly with these pathways, meaning that given a particular set of factors, the outcome, while not set in stone, was still highly predictable.
The three pathways are:
The Postsecondary–Credential Earner Pathway. High school graduates who went on to complete a postsecondary credential — a degree, certificate, or similar. Completing that credential was the strongest single predictor of later workforce outcomes: these “credential earners” were substantially more likely to be in sustained employment five years after high school than those who didn’t complete some kind of postsecondary credential program. Where they finished their program also mattered a great deal geographically — people tended to stay and work where they earned their credential.
The Workforce–First Pathway. Graduates who did not complete a postsecondary program but instead entered the workforce directly. Among this group, the strongest predictor of eventual sustained employment in the region was participation in career-aligned prep courses in high school such as CTE.
The Disconnected Pathway. A majority of persons who did not complete some kind of postsecondary education program and were not involved in CTE experienced persistent disconnection from the labor force in the years following high school. For many, this was not a temporary condition—it was a long-term trajectory shaped by structural barriers that began well before high school graduation. The data provided clear clues as to who is most at risk and what offered protection against this disconnection.
Each of these three pathways works differently, and lumping them together would hide exactly the patterns this report is trying to surface. A graduate who’s steadily employed nearby, one who’s cycling through unstable jobs, and one who’s disappeared from Minnesota’s employment records entirely are having three very different experiences, and each requires a different kind of response from workforce developers. The sections below take each pathway on its own terms: what it looks like, who tends to end up there, and what seems to make a difference.
The goal of this report
The goal of this report is not to decree that one pathway or outcome is better than another, but simply to introduce these findings and describe them, in this way helping workforce development professionals, education professionals, local and state officials and others interested in Greater Minnesota’s economic health understand the high-school-to-workforce pipeline and make informed decisions to improve it.
Pathway 1: The Credential Earners’ Pathway
The first major discovery in the dataset was this: Completing some kind of postsecondary education program had the most impact on whether a student ended up in sustained workforce participation for years to come.
Students who completed a program and received a credential, whether a four-year degree, two-year degree, certificate or other credential, followed a fundamentally different path compared to those who didn’t complete some kind of postsecondary education, and in particular, those who never started a postsecondary program at all.
This section walks through this finding in three parts:
- How strongly earning a credential is tied to steady employment;
- Which characteristics were associated with a graduate completing a credential in the first place; and
- What factors shaped whether credential earners built their career in the region or somewhere else.
Completing postsecondary education (or not completing it) had the strongest association with workforce participation outcomes across all the variables measured.
How strongly earning a credential is tied to steady employment
Just under half of Northeast Minnesota’s high school students graduating between 2008 and 2019 had completed some kind of postsecondary credential in the first five years after high school while just over half did not (Figure 4). Of those who completed a postsecondary program, 61.8% were in sustained workforce participation somewhere in Minnesota by Year 5, either inside or outside the Northeast region. By comparison, of those individuals who did not complete a postsecondary program, only 40.6% were working at the sustained workforce level in the region or elsewhere in Minnesota (Figure 5).
The 21.2-percentage-point difference shows a strong correlation between completing some kind of postsecondary education or training and finding sustained work.
Notably, the largest share of credential earners — 37.0% — ended up in sustained workforce participation in their home region, making a postsecondary credential directly relevant to Northeast Minnesota’s workforce.
What factors were more highly associated with completing a postsecondary program?
PSEO participation. Taking college courses while still in high school through Postsecondary Enrollment Options (PSEO) was associated with the largest completion gap of any characteristic in Figure 7. It is a fairly intuitive result, since PSEO participation means a student is already earning college credit before they graduate from high school.
Gender. Female graduates completed postsecondary credentials at notably higher rates than male graduates, even after accounting for other differences between them.
Range school districts.1 Where a graduate went to high school also mattered, independent of anything about the graduate themselves. Graduates from Iron Range school districts completed postsecondary credentials at a higher rate than otherwise similar graduates from other districts in the region, a gap the same size as the one for gender. Because the model accounts for local unemployment and a district’s urban or rural makeup at the same time, this association is not simply standing in for either of those.
Local unemployment. Graduates from districts with higher local unemployment were more likely to complete a postsecondary credential than otherwise similar graduates from districts with lower unemployment. This may seem counterintuitive, but in areas with fewer immediate job opportunities, a postsecondary credential may feel like a more necessary path forward. The data can’t confirm that this is the mechanism in any individual case, but the association held up after accounting for every other characteristic in the model.
Urban/town/rural mix community. Graduates from districts with an urban/town/rural mix were somewhat more likely to complete a postsecondary credential than those from entirely rural districts. The gap was smaller than for the factors above, but it held up independently.
CTE participation. Graduates who took Career and Technical Education courses in high school were slightly more likely to complete a postsecondary credential than those with no CTE background. The difference was the smallest of any characteristic examined, but it held up independently. It’s worth noting because CTE is often thought of as a path away from postsecondary education; here, it was associated with a small advantage toward completion.
Taking the ACT. Academic preparation, measured as ACT test performance, was one of the strongest characteristics associated with completing postsecondary education. Unlike the other factors on this list, though, it isn’t a simple yes/no comparison. While simply taking the test is associated with a real advantage, there is also an added layer in that the score matters more the higher it goes. Rather than a fixed boost, the likelihood of completing a postsecondary credential rose steadily as ACT scores increased.
Simply taking the ACT is associated with a substantial jump in the likelihood of postsecondary completion (Figure 6). Among otherwise similar graduates who didn’t take the ACT, the predicted likelihood of completing a postsecondary program was 32%. Among those who did take it, the likelihood climbed steadily with their score, from 40% at a score of 12 to 55% at a score of 21 (the national median) and 78% at 36. The highest scorers had more than double the predicted completion rate of graduates who never took the test at all.
ACT engagement is a relationship that builds continuously, meaning the size of the ACT’s association with completing a postsecondary program depends entirely on a student’s score. A student who takes the ACT and scores a 15 sees a modest boost in the likelihood they will complete a postsecondary program compared to not testing at all; a student who scores a 30 sees a boost in likelihood nearly three times as large. Both are real, and both point in the same direction — toward completing a postsecondary program and becoming established in sustained employment.
Figure 7 translates all these factors into a direct, apples-to-apples comparison. Each pair of dots shows the predicted likelihood of completing a postsecondary credential when all other factors are held constant. The chart represents them as two otherwise-similar graduates — one with the characteristic in question, one without it. The size of the boost varied widely across characteristics, from about 2 percentage points to as much as 10. PSEO participation showed the largest gap: a 53% likelihood of completing a postsecondary program compared to 43% for otherwise similar graduates who did not participate. Female graduates had a 53% likelihood of completing compared to 44% for otherwise similar male graduates, and graduates of Range school districts had a 55% likelihood compared to 46% for graduates of other districts, each a 9-point difference. Graduates from districts with higher local unemployment had a 52% likelihood compared to 44% for those from lower-unemployment districts.
The remaining characteristics showed smaller but still independent associations. Graduates from urban/town/rural mix districts had a 49% likelihood of completing compared to 45% for those from entirely rural districts. CTE participants showed the smallest difference of all, 49% compared to 47% for graduates with no CTE background.
None of these factors depended on another—each one held up on its own, even after accounting for every other factor in the model. A female graduate who participated in PSEO, took CTE courses, and attended a Range school in a district with higher local unemployment isn’t just benefiting from one of these factors. The data suggests these effects compound, each adding its own independent boost.
Where Do Credential Earners Establish Their Careers?
Among those who earned a credential, the data revealed another powerful pattern with implications for Northeast Minnesota’s ability to retain the talent it produces: Where a graduate completed college was strongly associated with where they ended up working. This wasn’t a complete surprise. Research has demonstrated for years that people tend to stay where they earned their postsecondary credential. This knowledge is important for workforce developers and employers who are looking to bolster their region’s labor force ranks.
Figure 8 illustrates the strong alignment between where a credential earner earned their degree and where they ended up working. Among those who graduated from a college in the Northeast region, 50% went on to have sustained workforce participation in the same region. Among those who graduated from a college elsewhere in Minnesota, 44% ended up with sustained workforce participation in the state but outside the region. And among those who graduated from a college outside Minnesota entirely, only 20% returned to the region, while 40% had no Minnesota employment record, indicating that they were most likely working in another state.
The good news for Northeast Minnesota is that nearly 60% of credential earners completed their postsecondary program in the region (Figure 9).
One common narrative about rural areas holds that two-year career and technical degrees keep graduates local, while four-year degrees send them off to bigger cities. This would suggest that credential type — an associate’s degree versus a bachelor’s — should shape where graduates end up working. The data, however, showed this was only partly true.
Once graduation location was accounted for, the credential type’s relationship with regional workforce participation weakens considerably but didn’t disappear: graduates with an associate degree or less had a predicted 41% likelihood of sustained regional workforce participation, compared to 34% for otherwise similar bachelor’s degree holders (Figure 10) — a real but modest 7-point difference. That’s a much smaller gap than graduation location produced: graduates who completed their credential regionally had a predicted 47% likelihood of sustained regional participation, compared to just 22% for those who completed elsewhere — a difference more than three times the size of the credential-level gap, just reinforcing that where students completed their credentials mattered far more than what credential they earned.
What factors shaped whether students completed their postsecondary programs in the region or somewhere else?
Many of the same factors indicating that a student would complete their postsecondary program also indicated where they would complete their program. Using the same approach as before — examining each characteristic’s relationship to college location while accounting for every other characteristic at the same time — several factors emerged as independently associated with whether a credential earner graduated from a regional institution or somewhere outside the region (Table 1).
| More Likely to Complete a Postsecondary Program within the Region | More Likely to Complete a Postsecondary Program Outside the Region |
|---|---|
| Urban/town/rural mix community. Graduates from districts with an urban/town/rural mix were more likely to complete their credential regionally than those from entirely rural districts. | Taking the SAT. Students who took the SAT were much less likely to complete their credential regionally, by far the largest gap on this side of the table. |
| Town/rural mix community. Graduates from town/rural mix districts were also more likely to complete regionally than those from entirely rural districts, though by a smaller margin. | Black identity. Black graduates were less likely to complete their credential within the region than White graduates. |
| Economic disadvantage. Graduates who qualified for free or reduced-price lunch were more likely to complete their credential regionally. | AP exam participation. Students who took an AP exam were less likely to complete their credential regionally. |
| Range school districts. Graduates from Range school districts were more likely to complete their credential regionally than those from other districts. | Female gender. Female graduates were slightly less likely than male graduates to complete their credential regionally, the smallest gap in this analysis. |
| Higher local wages. Graduates from districts with stronger local wages were more likely to complete their credential regionally. | |
| CTE concentration. Students who completed a CTE concentration or program were more likely to graduate from a regional institution than those with no CTE background. | |
| American Indian identity. American Indian graduates were more likely to complete their credential within the region than White graduates. | |
| Higher local unemployment. Graduates from districts with higher local unemployment were more likely to complete their credential regionally. |
Figure 11 shows how far each characteristic actually moves a credential earner’s predicted likelihood of graduating in the Northeast region. For each pair, the direction from the dark dot to the green dot shows which way the characteristic points: rightward toward staying regional, leftward toward moving away. On the regional side, the type of community a graduate came from stood out: graduates of urban/town/rural mix2 districts had a 60% likelihood of completing their credential in the Northeast region, compared to 39% for those from entirely rural districts (21 points), and graduates of town/rural mix districts had a 54% likelihood (15 points). The remaining pulls toward staying regional were considerably smaller: economic disadvantage, Range school districts, and higher local wages (6 points each), CTE concentration and American Indian identity (5 points each), and higher local unemployment (4 points). On the other side, taking the SAT showed the largest pull toward completing outside the region (37% vs. 58%, a 21-point gap, the same size as the urban/town/rural mix gap), followed by Black identity (49% vs. 57%, 8 points), taking an AP exam (51% vs. 58%, 7 points), and female gender (56% vs. 58%, 2 points).
ACT engagement isn’t included in the chart above because, as in the completion section earlier, it isn’t a simple yes-or-no comparison. It’s a relationship that builds continuously with score, but in this case it runs in the opposite direction (Figure 12).
Among otherwise similar completers who did not take the ACT, the predicted likelihood of completing a postsecondary program in the region is 69%. Test-takers with lower scores had a higher likelihood of completing their postsecondary program in the Northeast region: 79% at a score of 12 and 73% at a score of 15. From there, the likelihood dropped with every additional point, falling below the level for non-test-takers at around a score of 17 and reaching just 23% at a score of 36.
In other words, taking the ACT and scoring modestly is associated with more regional attachment than not testing at all — but scoring well on it is associated with substantially less regional attachment. The crossover point, right around 17, is a useful marker: below that score, ACT engagement reads as a local-commitment signal; above it, it reads as a launching pad toward opportunities elsewhere.
What does this mean for Northeast Minnesota?
The Credential Earners Pathway shows a clear pattern for Northeast Minnesota. Just under half of high school graduates completed a postsecondary credential, and those who did were significantly more likely to have ongoing sustained workforce participation. Among credential earners, where the degree was earned had far more of an impact on where that person eventually settled down for their career than what degree was earned, though credential type still added a smaller, independent pull of its own — sub-baccalaureate completers were somewhat more likely than bachelor’s completers to end up working in the region, but that gap was modest next to the much larger gap between graduating regionally and graduating anywhere else.
Academic preparation’s relationship to staying local isn’t as simple as “the most prepared students leave.” Taking the ACT and scoring modestly leaned regional; it was specifically strong scores — along with AP and SAT participation — that predicted leaving. CTE concentration, economic disadvantage, attending a Range school, American Indian identity, and coming from a district with an urban/town/rural or town/rural mix rather than an entirely rural one all pointed toward staying regional, as did higher local wages and higher local unemployment. Black identity and to a much smaller degree being female pointed toward completing elsewhere.
Pathway 2: The Workforce-First Pathway
The Workforce-First Pathway is the story of those Northeast Minnesota high school graduates who did not complete a postsecondary credential but still went on to find sustained workforce participation, mostly in the Northeast region but also in the rest of the state. These are the high school graduates who entered the workforce directly without completing a postsecondary program.
What distinguishes the non-credential earners on this pathway who did establish stable, sustained regional workforce participation from those who did not? As we will see, the story is simpler than the Credential Earner Pathway but no less important: Career-aligned preparation in high school is the clearest and most durable predictor of attachment to the regional workforce for this group.
Of the non-credential earners, two in five (41%) had sustained workforce participation five years after high school, 27% with employers in the region and 13% elsewhere in Minnesota (Figure 14). This is the group this pathway focuses on.
Understanding the variables and conditions that correlated with whether non-credential earners ended up in sustained workforce participation or not could contribute significantly to future policy and programming aimed at helping the other non-credential earners move into that sustained workforce participation group as well.
What factors were more likely to keep non-credential earners connected to sustained regional workforce participation?
Among non-credential earners, two characteristics stood out as independently associated with sustained workforce participation in the Northeast region: engagement with CTE and engagement with the ACT.
CTE Engagement
Students who completed a full CTE sequence — becoming what’s known as a “concentrator” — were significantly more likely to have sustained workforce participation in the region than peers with no CTE involvement.
Figure 15 shows how much CTE engagement was a factor for non-credential earners five years after high school. Those who finished a full sequence of CTE courses had a predicted 32% likelihood of sustained regional employment compared to 25% for otherwise similar peers with no CTE involvement. Even lighter CTE participation, short of a full sequence, showed a smaller but still real effect: 29% versus that same 25% baseline.
Both of these differences showed up at one year after high school and continued to grow through year 10, making CTE one of the most durable characteristics identified in this analysis. While several other factors we examined eventually shifted, faded, or reversed, CTE’s relationship with non-credential earners and regional attachment only deepened over time.
ACT Scores
As it did in the credential earner pathway, taking the ACT test comes with a twist. Simply taking the ACT was associated with higher odds of sustained regional employment, but only up to a point.
Among non-credential earners who did not take the ACT but who are otherwise similar in gender, race and ethnicity, economic background, and every other characteristic included in this model, the predicted likelihood of sustained regional employment at five years after high school graduation is 28%.
But as with the Credential Earner Pathway, the relationship between ACT engagement and future sustained workforce participation in the region among non-credential earners also depended on the score achieved.
As in the Credential Earners’ Pathway, taking the ACT and scoring modestly indicates a real likelihood of regional attachment, while scoring higher on it indicates a real likelihood of not having regional attachment. The likelihood starts out higher for non-credential earners who took the test and received lower scores, at 36% for a score of 12, but the odds fall from there. For non-credential earners who scored 36, the likelihood of them having sustained workforce participation in the region at five years after graduation was only 16%.
The crossover point here (around a score of 20) is a little higher than the one we saw for college location (around 17), but the underlying story is the same: a strong ACT performance signals something that pulls away from staying in the region.
What works for the Workforce-First pathway?
Taken together, CTE engagement is the clearest and most reliable factor identified for this pathway, and the relationship with sustained workforce participation in the region only strengthens over time. ACT participation matters, too, though it behaves differently compared to CTE: simply taking the ACT raises the likelihood of sustained workforce participation in the region, but when the score achieved is considered, higher scores indicate a person is more likely to leave the region, while a lower score is a real, substantial indicator of someone who will stay in the region, just as with credential earners.
While several other factors we examined eventually shifted, faded, or reversed, CTE’s relationship with non-credential earners and regional attachment only deepened over time.
Pathway 3: The Disconnected Pathway
Apart from those non-credential earners who ended up on the Workforce-First Pathway because of their sustained workforce participation, there is another sizable group of non-credential earners who do not. These are the individuals who find themselves on the Disconnected Pathway. The analysis revealed why this group tends to be disconnected from the workforce, what disconnection actually looks like, and why it often persists rather than resolve on its own.
Five years after high school, 40.6% of non-credential earners were on the Workforce-First Pathway, with sustained workforce participation in either the Northeast region or elsewhere in Minnesota (Figure 17). The remaining 59.4% of non-credential earners were either individuals with no Minnesota employment record (30.9%) or in non-sustained workforce participation (28.5%), meaning that in a given year they were working less than 1,000 hours and/or for more than one employer. This group is on the third pathway that emerged: the Disconnected Pathway.
Disconnected Pathway
High school graduates → Non-credential earners → Non-sustained workforce participation or no Minnesota employment record
Those individuals on this pathway were either not engaging fully with the local or state workforce (non-sustained workforce participation) or out of the local or state workforce completely (no Minnesota employment record). Moreover, for many in this group, that disconnection did not resolve on its own. This group was persistently disconnected from the labor force across the years. A handful did reconnect and move into the sustained workforce participation group, but for most, weak workforce attachment was not a temporary early-career condition—it was a trajectory.
This group is important because they represent a substantial pool of individuals who, for a variety of reasons, are not engaging fully with the local workforce (or even the state workforce) but could be if given the right mix of interventions before and after high school graduation. Perhaps one of the most important findings about this group was that the factors characterizing them made them almost easy to identify while still in K-12 and therefore ready for help if they wanted it.
It is worth a brief reminder of what “no Minnesota employment record” means in this context since it can reflect very different circumstances depending on the population being examined. As discussed earlier, for credential earners—particularly those who graduated from institutions outside the region or outside the state—the data showed that no Minnesota employment record often reflected out-of-state graduation, followed by out-of-state employment. Northeast Minnesota has only one place where this is likely to matter much: the region’s southeastern corner, where Duluth sits directly across the St. Louis River from Superior, Wisconsin. Minnesota’s tuition reciprocity agreement with Wisconsin makes the University of Wisconsin–Superior an affordable option, and a graduate working in Superior looks identical in this data to one who moved across the country, because Minnesota’s employment records can’t see across the state line. The rest of the region’s northern edge borders Ontario, where Minnesota has no tuition reciprocity and crossing an international border for school or work is far less routine.
That border dynamic matters less when interpreting “no Minnesota employment record” among non-credential earners. Regional labor market data from the U.S. Census Bureau provide a useful benchmark: among Northeast Minnesota adults whose highest level of education is a high school diploma, 32.4% are not in the labor force. This study’s observed rate among non-credential earners is 30.9%, slightly below that benchmark and within its margin of error. In other words, the share of non-credential earners with no Minnesota employment record is about what the region’s broader labor force patterns would predict. Some share may still reflect non-credential earners working in Superior or elsewhere in Wisconsin, or working for themselves: Minnesota’s employment records are based on employer-reported wages, so an individual working as a self-employed contractor or running their own small business would not appear in this data, regardless of location. That is not a trivial group in Northeast Minnesota, where there are about 18 nonemployer businesses (those with no paid employees) for every 100 payroll jobs. Military service and federal employment, which are also absent from state wage records, account for about 2% of the region’s employed residents. Both of these are too few to explain much of the no-record group, so on balance, the data suggest that for Northeast Minnesota non-credential earners, “no Minnesota employment record” largely reflects genuine disconnection from the workforce rather than employment the data simply can’t see.3
Persistence of disconnection
To determine how disconnected from the workforce each person in the group was, we tracked their workforce participation status across the first five years after leaving formal education. For individuals who never attended postsecondary education, this meant the five years immediately following high school graduation. For those who attended college or other postsecondary program but did not complete a credential, this meant the five years after they stopped attending. Individuals were then grouped by the degree of disconnection:
- Consistently Attached to the workforce: Disconnected in 0 of the first 5 years. In other words, they had consistently sustained workforce participation for five of the first five years.
- Intermittently Disconnected: Disconnected in 1-2 of the first 5 years
- Broadly Disconnected: Disconnected in 3 of the first 5 years
- Persistently Disconnected: Disconnected in 4-5 of the first 5 years
Understanding the degree of disconnection was a necessary step toward identifying where targeted intervention before and after high school graduation could make a substantial difference in the individuals’ lives and for the region’s workforce.
The results showed that more than half of non-credential earners—53%—were disconnected four to five of the first five years after leaving formal education, while only 12% were consistently attached across all five years (Figure 18). Most concerningly, the findings showed that for the majority of the people on this pathway, disconnection early on did not resolve itself; instead, it persisted.
Two Kinds of Disconnection
Within the Disconnected Pathway, non-sustained workforce participation means someone is working, just not steadily enough to meet the threshold of a sustained workforce participant. Think part-time, seasonal, or frequently interrupted work. No Minnesota employment record means there is no evidence the person worked in the state at all that year; it could mean they moved out of state for work, they left the workforce to be a stay-at-home parent, got a federal job, joined the military or started their own business. The data alone can’t always tell the difference.
These two situations don’t just look different—they behave differently by moving in opposite directions over time (Figure 19). Non-sustained employment is the more common experience early on, but the group shrinks year after year as people either find sustained workforce participation or shift into the no-Minnesota-employment-record group.
Having no Minnesota employment record behaves the opposite way. Fewer people experience it in year 1, but for those who do, it tends to stick. Instead of shrinking over time like non-sustained workforce participation does, it grows year over year.
Who is Most at Risk of Disconnection?
Within the analysis, the data revealed a set of demographic, academic, and geographic characteristics associated with a higher likelihood of ending up on the Disconnected Pathway. Understanding who faces these risks is the first step toward knowing where support is needed most.
Besides being in either the non-sustained workforce participation category or the no Minnesota employment record category, individuals in the dataset also carried with them their own unique mix of social, economic and demographic characteristics. We tested each of these characteristics to see if any of them, on their own, might influence which pathway a person might end up on. To take the analysis one step further, we asked: For each characteristic examined, is the elevated risk showing up as unstable employment, as no Minnesota employment record, as both or as neither?
Several characteristics (Table 2) in fact showed elevated risk on one side but not the other — an individual’s demographic profile can point toward a real risk of unstable employment while showing no relationship at all to disappearing from the record, or vice versa. Only Black identity showed an independently confirmed, elevated risk for both outcomes.
| Associated with Higher Odds of Persistent Unsustained Workforce Participation | Associated with Higher Odds of Persistent No-Record Status |
|---|---|
| Black identity. The largest instability gap in the analysis, and the only characteristic with a confirmed risk on both sides of this table. | Hispanic identity. The largest gap in either model, a striking, independent risk. |
| Special Education status. A real, independent risk factor for instability specifically. | Asian/Pacific Islander identity. A large, independent risk, nearly identical in size to the Hispanic finding. |
| American Indian identity. A real, independent risk, about the same size as the special education finding. | English learner status. A real, independent risk. |
| Female gender. A modest but real independent risk factor for instability specifically. | Black identity. Also elevated here, the only characteristic with a confirmed risk on both sides of this table. |
| PSEO participation. A modest but real independent risk, notable because PSEO participation was otherwise linked to higher postsecondary completion. |
Persistent unsustained workforce participation
The five characteristics in left column of the table stood out as independently linked to persistent unsustained workforce participation, but the size of their effects varied (Figure 20). Black identity showed the strongest association: when all other factors were held constant, Black individuals faced a predicted 24% likelihood of persistent non-sustained employment, compared to 16% for otherwise similar White individuals, an 8-point gap and 1.5 times the risk. Graduates with a special education designation faced a 20% likelihood compared to 15% for those without one, and American Indian graduates faced a 20% likelihood compared to 16% for otherwise similar White graduates. Female graduates (18% vs. 15% for male graduates) and PSEO participants (18% vs. 15% for non-participants) showed smaller but still real gaps. The PSEO finding is counterintuitive, given that PSEO participation was linked to a higher likelihood of completing a postsecondary credential. Among graduates who did not complete one, however, PSEO participants were somewhat more likely to end up in unstable work. Even at the modest end, none of these gaps disappear once all other factors are accounted for; each one is an independent, standalone contributor to an individual’s risk of persistent instability.
Persistent No Minnesota Employment Record
On the other side of the table, how much does each characteristic contribute to someone’s odds of persistently disappearing from Minnesota’s employment records?
Hispanic identity showed the largest gap of the group (Figure 21): a 34% likelihood of persistently having no Minnesota employment record compared to 19% for otherwise similar White graduates, a 15-point gap. Asian/Pacific Islander identity shows a nearly identical gap, 33% compared to 19%. English learner status shows the next largest effect, 28% compared to 19% for otherwise similar non-English learners, a 9-point gap. Black identity rounds out the list with the smallest effect: 25% compared to 19% for otherwise similar White graduates, a 6-point gap.
One More Factor: ACT Engagement
ACT engagement — whether someone took the ACT or not — is an anomaly in that its correlation to the risk of being disconnected isn’t a simple yes/no like the other characteristics. Whether it increases or decreases a person’s risk of ending up disconnected depends first on whether an individual took the test, then on what score they received.
Compared with otherwise similar non-credential earners who never took the test, test-takers with lower scores had lower risk of both persistent instability and persistent no-record status. That advantage did not hold across the full range of scores, though.
Among students who did take the ACT, a higher score was associated with increased risk of both outcomes (Figure 22). Predicted risk of persistent instability rose from about 11% at the lowest scores to about 17% at the highest, passing the 13% for non-takers at around a score of 18. Predicted risk of persistent no-record status rose more steeply, from about 19% at the lowest scores to about 43% at the highest, passing the 33% for non-takers at around a score of 27. The two outcomes move together in parallel, suggesting that whatever is driving this pattern isn’t specific to one type of disconnection. It reflects a broader relationship between stronger academic performance and reduced regional attachment that shows up consistently across outcomes. The data were clear on this phenomenon but could not reveal why it happens. It may reflect something about the pathway that leads a well-prepared student to not complete a credential in the first place.
Disparities Compound Across the Pipeline
The demographic characteristics identified in this pathway are not unique to non-credential earners. Recall from the Credential Earners’ Pathway that several of the same characteristics associated with elevated disconnection risk here were also associated with a lower likelihood of completing a postsecondary credential in the first place.
Special education, Black, American Indian, Hispanic and Asian/Pacific Islander high school graduates all showed this pattern (Figure 23). Special education status showed the largest gap among them, 14 points: graduates with a special education designation had a predicted 36% likelihood of completing a postsecondary credential, compared to 50% for otherwise similar graduates without one. Black graduates (41% vs. 49% for otherwise similar White graduates), Hispanic and American Indian graduates (each 42% vs. 49%) and Asian/Pacific Islander graduates (44% vs. 49%) showed smaller gaps. Black identity stands out as the only characteristic in this analysis associated with elevated risk at every stage examined: lower odds of completion and elevated odds of both persistent unsustained workforce participation and persistent no-record status.
Economic disadvantage follows a different pattern: among high school graduates in total, eligibility for free or reduced-price lunch showed the largest gap of all, a 39% likelihood of completing a postsecondary credential compared to a 54% likelihood for those who were not eligible. In the non-credential earner group, however, economic disadvantage was not linked to persistent unsustained workforce participation and was even associated with lower odds of a persistent no Minnesota employment record status. Graduates from districts with higher local wages also had a slightly lower predicted likelihood of completing a credential (47% vs. 49%), though local wages were not tied to either form of disconnection.
Taken together, these findings suggest that disparities along the pathway don’t operate as separate, one-time barriers. They compound. A graduate with one of these characteristics is less likely to complete a postsecondary credential, but in not completing one, they join the group where the same characteristic is again associated with a higher likelihood of disconnection from the workforce. The effect is cumulative: two gaps stacked on the same students, each independent of the other and each still present after accounting for everything else the model measures. This is especially relevant for special education status, which showed the largest completion gap among these groups and is identified in school records long before graduation. The students most likely to face disadvantages at both stages are, in other words, already known to the K–12 system, which makes high school a practical point to reach them before the gaps widen further.
What Offers Protection Against Disconnection?
Protections Against Persistent Instability
Among the many characteristics examined, two showed a confirmed, independent protective relationship against persistent instability: Asian/Pacific Islander identity and attending postsecondary education, even without completing it (Figure 24).
Asian/Pacific Islander graduates had a predicted 9% likelihood of persistent unsustained workforce participation, compared to 16% for otherwise similar White graduates, a 7-point gap. Individuals who attended some form of postsecondary education, even without finishing, had a predicted 13% likelihood, compared to 18% for otherwise similar graduates who never attended at all. This second finding makes intuitive sense. Even a partial postsecondary experience often comes with structured routines, career counseling, and connections to employers that a graduate heading straight into the workforce may never encounter. It may also reflect something more basic: the kind of planning and follow-through it takes to enroll in the first place tends to carry over into a steadier transition into work, whether or not the credential itself was ever finished.
The Asian/Pacific Islander finding is more complicated than it first appears. Asian/Pacific Islander graduates were less likely to have persistent workforce instability, but findings discussed earlier showed them less likely to complete a postsecondary credential (44% vs. 49%) and more likely to persistently have no Minnesota employment record (33% vs. 19%). Rather than a consistently positive or negative pattern, this group’s outcomes point in different directions at different stages: those who remain in Minnesota’s formal workforce appear more likely to find steady footing, even as the group as a whole faces barriers to completing a postsecondary credential and a higher likelihood of disappearing from the state’s records.
Protections Against Persistent No MN Employment Record
While persistent instability showed two confirmed protective factors for non-postsecondary credential earners, no Minnesota employment record had six (Figure 25).
Attending college, even without completing a credential, showed the largest effect: a 14% likelihood compared to 23% for otherwise similar graduates who never attended, a 9-point gap. This mirrors the finding for persistent instability, where postsecondary attendance was also protective, making it one of the few characteristics associated with lower risk of both forms of disconnection.
CTE engagement showed a comparable effect, split across two levels of involvement: CTE Concentrators/Completers had a predicted 17% likelihood, compared to 23% for otherwise similar graduates with no CTE background (a 6-point gap), while CTE Participants showed a slightly smaller 5-point gap (18% vs. 23%), demonstrating once again that CTE engagement tends to keep graduates connected to Minnesota’s workforce. Economic disadvantage showed a protective effect of its own (18% vs. 23%), while participating in PSEO (17% vs. 21%) and female gender (19% vs. 21%) showed smaller, though still real, effects.
A Local Opportunity
This distinction between non-sustained workforce participation and no Minnesota employment record matters. Because individuals with no Minnesota employment record have no employment data on file, we can’t say anything about where they might be working. But for the unsustained-workforce-participation group, we can understand where they are and what they’re doing, and that turns out to be a genuinely useful, actionable finding.
It turns out that, of the disconnected group in non-sustained workforce participation, nearly three-quarters (73.5%) were working in Northeast Minnesota, while the other 26.5% were working outside the region.
On the surface, the larger percentage of non-postsecondary credential earners with no Minnesota employment record might signal that graduates are leaving the region for better opportunities or that the region simply doesn’t have enough jobs. But neither explanation holds up here: the non-postsecondary credential earners in unsustained workforce participation have Minnesota employment records; they are already here, working in Northeast Minnesota — just not at a level that reflects sustained workforce participation (working 1,000+ hours for the same employer in a particular year). These locally employed but potentially underutilized workers represent a meaningful opportunity, one that may be better addressed through strategies focused on job quality, advancement pathways, and retention rather than recruitment alone.
Key Insights and Implications
Earning a postsecondary credential is one of the strongest signs that a graduate will find steady work, and where they go to school matters more than what degree they earn. Graduates who finished any kind of postsecondary program were much more likely to have steady jobs, and those who finished that program in the region were far more likely to still be working there five years later. This holds true whether they earned a two-year or four-year degree. In other words, how strong and accessible the region’s own colleges are may matter more for keeping talent local than the type of degree those colleges offer.
The tests students take, and how they score, say a lot about where they’re headed. Taking the ACT and scoring modestly was tied to earning a credential in the region and, among students who didn’t finish college, lower risk of both unstable work and falling off Minnesota’s employment records. Strong scores pointed the other way: higher-scoring test-takers were more likely to complete a credential outside the region and, among those who didn’t finish, more likely to end up disconnected. Taking the SAT showed the largest pull toward earning a credential outside the region of any characteristic, and taking an AP exam also pointed outward. None of these tests explains why students leave or stay, but together they suggest that by the end of high school, many students have already signaled which way they’re leaning, something educators should be able to see.
Career and Technical Education is the most consistent anchor to the region found anywhere in this analysis. CTE was tied to:
- Earning a postsecondary credential at a regional school;
- A modestly higher likelihood of earning a credential at all;
- Steady regional employment among graduates who didn’t earn a credential after high school, a relationship that grew stronger over time; and
- Lower odds of falling off Minnesota’s employment records for good.
No other high school experience points as consistently toward staying in — and staying visible in — the region’s workforce. CTE participation in Northeast Minnesota was also associated with a small advantage in completing a postsecondary credential, a reminder that CTE is not a path away from college. Its strongest effects, though, are about where someone ends up. This suggests that investing in strong, well-connected CTE programs may be one of the best ways to improve outcomes for a wide range of students, not just those heading straight into the workforce.
For most groups, barriers pile up along the pipeline, but not for everyone, and not always in the same direction. Students with a special education designation showed a 14-point gap in the likelihood of earning a postsecondary credential and, among those who didn’t, a higher risk of unstable work. Hispanic students faced lower odds of finishing earning a postsecondary credential and, among those who didn’t, the highest risk of any group of persistently having no Minnesota employment record. Black students were the only group associated with elevated risk at every stage we examined: lower odds of earning a postsecondary credential and higher odds of both persistently unstable work and persistently having no Minnesota employment record. For these groups, these aren’t separate problems showing up at different times; they’re the same underlying issue showing up repeatedly across time.
Several findings break that pattern, though, and are worth calling out directly:
- American Indian students point in two directions. They faced lower odds of earning a postsecondary credential and, among those who didn’t, a higher risk of unstable work. But among credential earners, American Indian graduates were more likely than White graduates to finish their credential in the region.
- Economic hardship cuts both ways. Students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch showed the largest gap in earning a postsecondary credential of any group, but among those who didn’t earn a credential, economic hardship was not tied to unstable work and was actually tied to lower odds of falling off Minnesota’s employment records. Among credential earners, it was tied to finishing in the region.
- Asian/Pacific Islander students show a mixed pattern. These students faced lower odds of earning a credential after high school and a much higher risk of persistently having no Minnesota employment record, but among those who didn’t finish, they were much less likely than otherwise similar White graduates to be stuck in unstable work.
- PSEO participation cuts both ways, too. Taking college courses in high school was tied to higher odds of finishing a postsecondary credential and, among those who didn’t finish, lower odds of falling off Minnesota’s employment records, but also to a modestly higher risk of unstable work.
Disconnection isn’t a single problem, and neither is disadvantage. These findings are a reminder that disadvantage doesn’t operate in just one direction, and disconnection isn’t a single problem with a single cause. The same characteristic can raise one kind of risk while lowering another, and a barrier at one stage of the pipeline doesn’t automatically mean a barrier at every stage.
Some postsecondary program exposure — even without finishing — helps on both fronts. Among students who didn’t finish a postsecondary program, simply attending was tied to both a lower risk of unstable work and a lower risk of falling off Minnesota’s employment records. That makes it one of the few characteristics in this analysis associated with protection against both forms of long-term disconnection. It points to a real opportunity: helping more students access and stick with some college, even if they don’t finish, may pay off for their long-term connection to work.
The disconnected are already here. Among students who didn’t earn a credential, about 29% were employed but below the threshold for sustained workforce participation five years after high school. Nearly three-quarters of that group (73.5%) were working within Northeast Minnesota itself, not elsewhere in the state. That means the real challenge isn’t finding or attracting workers from outside the region. It’s helping people who are already working here move into steadier, more substantial work.
In Northeast Minnesota, “no Minnesota employment record” mostly looks like genuine disconnection. The share of non-credential earners with no Minnesota employment record (30.9%) is slightly below what regional labor market data would predict (32.4%). Some share likely reflects graduates working across the river in Superior or working for themselves, but there is little sign that this is a large group the data simply can’t see. That makes the no-record group in this region less a data artifact and more a real population, one that, given the characteristics identified here, could largely be identified while still in high school.
In closing
Northeast Minnesota’s path from high school to the workforce isn’t broken, but it isn’t smooth and problem-free either. For graduates who earn a postsecondary credential in the region, the road to a stable, local job is fairly clear; that holds true whether they earn a two-year or four-year degree. For those who go straight into the workforce, hands-on career training in high school makes a real difference, but not every student is taking advantage of, or has access to, the opportunity. And for those who end up disconnected long-term, the barriers are structural, tend to build on each other for most (though not all) groups, and are easy to miss if you’re only looking at one moment in time instead of the whole path.
This report doesn’t solve these problems. But it does show where they’re most concentrated, who’s carrying the biggest burden, and where a closer look might make the biggest difference. That’s the starting point for a better conversation about how Northeast Minnesota invests in its young people, and in the systems meant to carry them from school into work.
Appendix
Limitations
This analysis, like all research based on administrative data, has real limits worth stating plainly.
These findings describe patterns, not complete explanations. The characteristics discussed in this report explain some, but not all, of why graduates’ paths differ. Many things that shape a person’s life and career — family circumstances, personal choices, specific employers, health, and countless other factors — are not captured in this dataset. The percentages in this report reflect what these particular, measurable characteristics can predict on average. They are not a full accounting of any individual graduate’s story, and they should not be read as a prediction about any specific person.
Some data does not fully capture what it appears to measure. For example, a “no Minnesota employment record” does not always mean someone is disconnected from the workforce — it can also reflect a graduate who moved out of state for work or school. We’ve noted these ambiguities directly wherever they affect how a finding should be interpreted.
A small number of characteristics we originally considered were excluded from this analysis due to data quality concerns. Most notably, we chose not to include Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA) proficiency scores as a factor in our models. We found that missing MCA scores were far more common among English language learner students than other students, and there was no reliable way to determine whether that pattern reflected something meaningful about a student’s circumstances or simply a gap in how the data were recorded. Rather than risk drawing a conclusion from an unreliable measure, we excluded it from our analysis entirely.
Some findings are based on small numbers of individuals and should be treated with appropriate caution. Comparisons involving the region’s smaller racial and ethnic groups, in particular, rest on relatively few graduates, so the exact size of those gaps is less certain than for findings based on larger groups.
Methodology
Data and Population
This report draws on linked, anonymized administrative records provided by the State of Minnesota, combining three sources: high school records (courses, CTE participation, MCA and ACT scores, and demographic indicators), postsecondary records from Minnesota’s public higher education systems and the National Student Clearinghouse (capturing both in-state and out-of-state enrollment and completion), and Minnesota employment records from the Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED), which capture wages, hours, and employer attachment for work performed within Minnesota.
The analysis covers 49,816 individuals who graduated from high schools in Northeast Minnesota, defined as the seven counties of Economic Development Region 3 (Arrowhead), between 2008 and 2023. Individual analyses within the report sometimes restrict this population further depending on the question being asked (for example, models predicting outcomes five years after graduation exclude students who graduated too recently to have five years of data), and each figure’s caption or surrounding text notes when a subset is being used.
Outcome Categories
Each graduate’s status was assessed annually and assigned to one of five mutually exclusive categories: Sustained Workforce Participation–Northeast (1,000+ hours in a year with a single employer within the region), Sustained Workforce Participation–Minnesota (the same threshold, met elsewhere in the state), Non-sustained Workforce Participation (some Minnesota employment, but below the sustained threshold, and not enrolled in school), Attending Postsecondary, and No Minnesota Employment Record (no observed Minnesota employment or enrollment for that year). As discussed throughout the report, this last category is not synonymous with disconnection; it also captures out-of-state employment, military service, federal employment, and other circumstances Minnesota’s records cannot observe.
Analytical Approach
The analysis proceeded in two stages for each research question. First, bivariate relationships — the association between a single characteristic and an outcome, considered on its own — were examined descriptively to identify candidate characteristics worth testing further. Second, characteristics that showed a bivariate relationship were tested together in multivariate logistic regression models, which estimate each characteristic’s association with an outcome while holding all other characteristics in the model constant. This second step is what allows the report to describe a relationship as “independent” — meaning it held up even after accounting for a graduate’s other measured characteristics, rather than simply reflecting overlap with some other factor (for example, a raw gap between two groups that actually stems from one group having higher rates of PSEO participation, rather than group membership itself).
A characteristic is described in this report as significantly associated with an outcome only if the relationship met a standard statistical threshold (p < .05) in these multivariate models, meaning there is less than a 5% probability that a relationship of this size would appear by chance if no real relationship existed. Characteristics that did not meet this threshold are not reported as findings, even where an earlier bivariate relationship appeared to exist.
Reading “Predicted Likelihood” Figures
Many figures in this report show a “predicted likelihood” for two groups — a graduate with a given characteristic and an otherwise similar graduate without it. These are not raw, observed rates. They are model-based estimates, generated by holding a characteristic at each of its two values in turn (for example, Gender = Female, then Gender = Male) while leaving every other characteristic in the model at each individual’s actual recorded value, then averaging the resulting predictions across the full population. This approach — sometimes called average marginal prediction or marginal standardization — produces a like-for-like comparison: the difference between the two predicted values reflects the association of that one characteristic alone, net of everything else the model accounts for, rather than a raw gap that might be driven by differences in the two groups’ other characteristics.
For two continuous characteristics examined in this report — local wages and local unemployment rate — “predicted likelihood” comparisons use the 10th and 90th percentile of that measure across the region’s school districts, rather than an all-or-nothing comparison, to avoid a small number of extreme districts driving the result.
Tracking Persistence Over Time
For the Disconnected Pathway specifically, graduates who did not complete a postsecondary credential were tracked across the first five years following their exit from formal education (high school for those who never attended college; the point of leaving college for those who attended without completing). Based on how many of those five years a graduate spent disconnected — in either non-sustained employment or with no Minnesota employment record — graduates were grouped into four categories: Consistently Attached (disconnected in 0 of 5 years), Intermittently Disconnected (1–2 years), Broadly Disconnected (3 years), and Persistently Disconnected (4–5 years). This categorization made it possible to distinguish a temporary post-graduation adjustment period from a longer-term pattern.
A Note on Association, Not Causation
Every relationship described in this report is an association, not a demonstrated cause. The characteristics examined here are not the only things that shape a graduate’s path — family circumstances, individual choices, specific local employers, health, and countless other factors that this dataset cannot capture all play a role. A relationship holding up across multiple statistical controls increases confidence that it reflects something real and not merely a coincidence of overlapping characteristics, but it does not establish that changing one characteristic would, on its own, change a graduate’s outcome.
1 Range school districts are the districts serving communities on the Mesabi and Vermilion iron ranges: Chisholm (ISD 695), Ely (ISD 696), Hibbing (ISD 701), Mesabi East (ISD 2711; Aurora, Hoyt Lakes, Biwabik), Mountain Iron-Buhl (ISD 712), Nashwauk-Keewatin (ISD 319), Rock Ridge (ISD 2909; Virginia, Eveleth, Gilbert), and the districts serving Tower and Babbitt. Districts were assigned by the cities they serve rather than by county, since St. Louis and Itasca counties also include communities outside the Iron Range. Nearby districts sometimes grouped with the Range, including Grand Rapids, Deer River, Floodwood, and Cook County, were not included, nor were Duluth, the North Shore, and Carlton County districts. ↩
2 For an explanation of the RUCA categories go to https://www.ruralmn.org/rural-urban-commuting-areas-1/ ↩
3 Note on the source of the 32.4% benchmark: This figure is the share of Northeast Minnesota adults ages 25 to 64 whose highest level of education is a high school diploma (including equivalency) who are not in the labor force, summed across the seven counties of Economic Development Region 3 (Aitkin, Carlton, Cook, Itasca, Koochiching, Lake and St. Louis; 12,390 of 38,282; margin of error ±1.4 percentage points), from the U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020–2024 5-Year Estimates, Table B23006. The comparison is approximate. The ACS measures current residents of the region rather than everyone who graduated from its high schools, covers a broader age range than the graduates examined here, and measures labor force participation rather than the presence of a Minnesota employment record. In addition, some non-credential earners attended college without completing a credential; adults in the region with some college or an associate’s degree have a lower non-participation rate (20.6%), so the true benchmark for this group may be somewhat below 32.4%, and the observed rate may sit above the benchmark rather than below it. Neither cross-border employment in Wisconsin or Ontario nor self-employment can be observed in Minnesota’s employer-reported wage records, so the exact share of the no-record group they account for cannot be determined from this data alone. Nonemployer businesses are from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2023 Nonemployer Statistics, and payroll jobs from 2023 County Business Patterns; military and federal employment are from the American Community Survey 2020–2024 5-Year Estimates, Tables B23025 and S2408. ↩