Tag: workforce

State of Rural Highlight – nuance in the top employment industries

By Kelly Asche  Every year the Center publishes the “State of Rural” report – a brief overview of the demographic and economic trends from a rural perspective. This year’s report will be published in December 2021. Over the next few months, we will be writing about some of the trends in the report here on our blog allowing ...

Building Community, Embracing Difference: Immigrants, Refugees, and Local Government Outreach in Rural Minnesota

By Whitney Oachs, Elizabeth Gehlen, Josiah Moore & Ryan Redmer Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs graduate students For our full report including results, methodology, bibliography, and glossary of terms, download this PDF. While there has been a lot of talk about diversity in the last year, not much is known about BIPOC (Black, ...

Meatpacking Towns bring diversity to rural Minnesota

By Whitney Oachs, Research intern If you listened to our latest episode on our The Center of Everywhere podcast, you know that my classmates and I at the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs completed a capstone thesis this spring on local government outreach among rural immigrant and refugee communities. In the study, we ...

Interconnected Rural-Urban Conversations: Minnesota’s Workforce – Help Wanted, Everywhere

      Thursday, April 29th: Minnesota’s Workforce – Help Wanted, Everywhere Our second Interconnected Conversation focused on the workforce shortage in Minnesota. Panelists discussed the similarities and differences in the workforce shortage between urban and rural Minnesota, how the pandemic affected employment in rural and urban areas differently, and some possible solutions for solving ...
Girl writing

Disruptions in child care access show its importance to the economy

By Marnie Werner, Vice President, Research & Operations A lack of reliable child care was the single biggest problem for employees in America before the pandemic. Now, as parents head back to work, they will be looking for child care, whether it’s with their old provider or a new one, and that will drive up ...

Season 1 Ep. 19: Homelessness in rural MN, with Rhonda Otteson

On this week’s episode, Julie talks with Rhonda Otteson, Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless, about homelessness in rural Minnesota. It’s easy to overlook since homelessness doesn’t always look the way we think it should. Rhonda and Julie discuss the many hidden factors that put people at risk for homelessness, why the housing situation in Greater ...

Child care in rural Minnesota after 2020

by Marnie Werner, VP Research A unique opportunity? For a printable version of this report, click here. To view the accompanying webinar, click here. To download the slides from the webinar presentation, click here. After a year of COVID, spiking unemployment, closed schools, and restricted businesses, rural Minnesotans may be looking at a unique opportunity in ...
childs hand with jar of crayons

The key to a great opportunity if we can grab it

By Marnie Werner, VP, Research & Operations Ready for a silver lining? So much of what we hear about the pandemic is doom and gloom, but as a new report we released last month on workforce and job vacancies showed, rural Minnesota is sitting at the crossroads of two important trends that have created a ...