EXCERPT: “Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is asking the state Legislature for $1.8 million to fund seven more full-time prosecutors and two legal assistants to provide help in county attorney’s offices statewide. In the Attorney General’s Office Criminal Division there are currently three full-time prosecutors, up from one when Ellison took office. When counties can’t handle ...

By Marnie Werner, Research Director So, what keeps you up at night, worrying about rural Minnesota? Is it economic development? Housing? Access to healthcare? Long-term care? Child care? The deepening workforce shortage? These are the types of concerns the Center was created to research: subjects that may be universal for the whole state, but have ...

EXCERPT: “Job openings in Minnesota climbed to a record high in fourth quarter 2021, surpassing 214,000 total openings even as Minnesota employers continue to add jobs, according to figures released today by the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) . . . The seven-county Twin Cities metro had nearly 127,000 job vacancies (59% ...

EXCERPT: “Buckling up. It’s a two-second step that helps parents come home to their kids, teenagers graduate and pursue their dreams, and families avoid the heartache of losing a loved one in a crash. Too many Minnesotans skipped that step the last two years and the consequences are permanent and tragic. The number of people ...

EXCERPT: “Employment data released last week showed Minnesota hit its lowest unemployment rate ever recorded, 2.2 percent statewide, and a little higher in some parts of the state, last month. That astonishingly low number might feel like cause for celebration — especially less than two years after unemployment rates spiked to 10.8 percent in May of 2020.  But ...

COVID-19 didn’t just impact the health of rural communities, it also deeply impacted the local economy and workforce. In this webinar, Kelly Asche from the Center for Rural Policy and Development examines recently released jobs and workforce data during the pandemic. Three panelists join the conversation to discuss the numbers and dive deeper into the ...

This week on the Center of Everywhere hear research associate Whitney Oachs interview Zoe Martins and Ulises Linares about their Capstone thesis for the Humphrey School of Public Affairs regarding childcare access for first-generation Latino migrants in Worthington, MN.

Marnie Werner, VP Research Whitney Oachs, Research Associate Kelly Asche, Research Associate Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, there has still been little research on the impact of the coronavirus on rural communities or the accompanying public health and economic measures taken to control its spread. In Minnesota, like the rest of the nation, the ...

Whitney Oachs, Research Associate                     Last year, CRPD collaborated with students at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs to publish “Building community, embracing difference: Immigrants, refugees, and local government outreach in rural Minnesota.” While this study established the need for equity and inclusion initiatives among rapidly diversifying meatpacking towns, it only brushed ...

EXCERPT: “Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison on Thursday made a $1.8 million ask of state lawmakers that he said would help his office bring on additional prosecutors and yield more criminal convictions in greater Minnesota. Ellison, a first-term Democrat, said he has proposed additional funding for his office’s criminal division three years in a row with ...