Tag: jobs

State of Rural preview: Nonemployer statistics

By: Kelly Asche, Senior Research Every January, the Center for Rural Policy and Development releases the “State of Rural,” a report that provides the trends of important demographic and economic measures. We usually have to wait until December—that is when the U.S. Census Bureau releases the newest batch of data for the American Community Survey, ...

The Journey to meaningful workforce participation among graduates in Southwest Minnesota

The data show that the choices students make in high school and that paths they take after high school can predictably guide them to specific states of meaningful workforce participation later on. November 2023 By Kelly Asche, Senior Researcher | Marnie Werner, VP of Research & Operations For a print version of this report, click ...
Four cute babies sitting in a row

Rural Child Care Solutions: From the Ground Up

By Marnie Werner, Vice President, Research & Operations Click here for a printable version of this report. For a quick summary of this report, click here. Click here for more on what the MN Department of Human Services is doing to help with the child care shortage. Click here for more on the value of ...
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 ...

Job Opportunity Building Zones: Constructing the Framework for Program Evaluation (2004)

One of the first bills introduced in the 2003 Minnesota Legislative session was H.F. 3, creating what is now known as rural Job Opportunity Building Zones, or JOBZ. Announced after its passage as Gov. Tim Pawlentyʼs “marquee” rural economic development initiative, the program partitioned most of the state outside of the seven-county metropolitan area into ...