January, 2021 By Kelly Asche, Research Associate Last week the Center released a new report on the state of rural Minnesota’s workforce. In 2019, we assembled a four-part series on rural Minnesota’s worker shortage, it’s impact on economic growth in Greater Minnesota, and what rural communities are doing about the problem. Now, almost a year into the ...

EXCERPT: “Area lawmakers say broadband funding will be a crucial issue in this year’s legislative session, but no one is certain just how much the state will spend. COVID-related regulations and lockdown efforts exacerbated Greater Minnesota’s need for better internet access over the past year, giving urgency to the Capitol’s annual debate over broadband infrastructure. ...

  As the state begins the work of recovering economically from the pandemic, this historic event has left rural Minnesota with a unique opportunity: a large pool of unemployed workers and a large number of jobs that need filling. In this webinar from January 21, 2021 The Center for Rural Policy & Development presented their ...

EXCERPT: “Unemployment rates have risen in rural Minnesota due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but they mask a bigger challenge. A decade-long worker shortage continues to persist in many industries in rural Minnesota, according to new research conducted for the Center for Rural Policy and Development by Kelly Asche and Marnie Werner. Asche presented the findings ...

Last week we released our report exploring how the pandemic has impacted jobs and the workforce in Rural Minnesota. And on this episode, we get to dive in a bit deeper into this topic with a couple of our Workforce Development Boards and a labor analyst with the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development ...

EXCERPT: “Getting shots into arms in rural Americans, most of whom see getting the vaccine as a personal choice and not a social responsibility to protect others, is a problem that will require tailored outreach and messaging. It underscores that a cookie cutter approach to vaccine hesitancy campaigns will not work. Even as coronavirus surges in ...

By Kelly Asche, Research associate & Marnie Werner, VP Research This week the Center is released a new report on the state of rural Minnesota’s workforce. In 2019, we assembled a four-part series on rural Minnesota’s worker shortage, it’s impact on economic growth in Greater Minnesota, and what rural communities are doing about the problem. ...

Pandemic paints a different employment picture in rural Minnesota January 2021 By Kelly Asche, Research Associate, & Marnie Werner, Director of Research For a printable version of this report, click here. Our podcast episode diving deeper into this research can be found here. On January 21st, 2021 we hosted a webinar presenting this research as ...

EXCERPT: “After nearly a year of modified instruction in many school districts across the state, some Minnesota students are not giving distance learning high marks. More than a half-dozen students representing various communities shared their frustrations over the learning model during the House Education Finance Committee’s first meeting of the session. They all agreed the ...

EXCERPT: “A strong majority of farmers/farmworkers say the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted their mental health, and more than half say they are personally experiencing more mental health challenges than they were a year ago, according to a new American Farm Bureau poll . . . The results of the new poll clearly demonstrate that the ...