DEED: Minnesota gains jobs for fourth straight month

ST. PAUL, Minn. (KEYC) — The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development released the state’s job numbers for the month of April on Thursday.

Minnesota’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate decreased to 4.1% in April, while the national rate rose from 6.0% to 6.1% from March to April.

Minnesota gained 11,300 jobs in April, the fourth straight month of job gains. The private sector has regained 57.7% of jobs lost due to the pandemic.

Minnesota’s job growth has been better than many other states across the nation, which officials say is something to be optimistic about even though there is still plenty of work to be done.

“With having seen the U.S. numbers, we might have anticipated that we would not see something massively different here. We were encouraged that we did a little bit better than the rest of the country on job growth, but as I said, it is a tricky time in our economy,” DEED Commissioner Steve Grove explained. “It is not going to be a steady line, a steady trajectory to the economy the pandemic gave us to the economy that will become our next chapter.”

Minnesota is still a little behind the national average in year-over-year growth, but the state has been making up the difference with slightly stronger gains in seasonally adjusted growth since January.

The Mankato Metropolitan Statistical Area saw a year-over-year employment change of +9% between April 2020 and April 2021.

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