The big thing you should know about economic recovery in the Minneapolis Saint Paul region for the week of February 1st.
This is the Recovery Hub Weekly Take, a new resource giving you the latest insights on regional economic recovery in the Minneapolis Saint Paul region.
This Week’s Big Thing: students and teachers are returning to in-person learning across the metro, opening up return-to-work for parents who have been sidelined. According to the Minnesota Department of Health over half of school districts in the metro are offering in-person learning or a combination of in-person and virtual learning models as of this week. This is a big deal for regional economic recovery because it means parents who have been sidelined from work while taking on virtual learning and childcare duties can rejoin the labor force.
It hasn’t come without its challenges. You may remember back in December Governor Walz revised the Safe Learning Plan to no longer include the rate of spread by county part of the criteria for when elementary schools can reopen and gave elementary schools across the state the choice to reopen beginning January 18th. Large school districts including Saint Paul Public Schools and Minneapolis Public Schools have had push back from parents and teachers, questioning the safety of this step before teachers have been able to get vaccinated. While many teachers returning to in-person learning this week still had yet to be vaccinated, the state has prioritized teachers and childcare workers in vaccination distribution and many are starting to receive the vaccine.
A critical step towards regional economic recovery is getting people back to work. Employment in the region dropped by 2.1% from November to December and remains 7.9% lower than one year prior. Many of the jobs lost are those in sectors that weren’t able to transition to work-from-home when the state first enacted stay-at-home orders to slow the spread of the virus. Working parents were forced to quit working voluntarily to stay home with children who shifted to virtual learning. We know now that many of these working parents have since dropped out of the labor force altogether. In fact, the regional labor force, the number of people who are working or who are actively seeking work, has declined by 71,000, falling 3.5% over-the-year. The total size of the labor force is the lowest it has been since 2017.
We’re also getting a clearer indication of disproportionate impacts to labor participation. This week the Minneapolis Fed published new research finding that mothers are bearing disruptions disproportionately. In April 2020, the initial stay-at-home phase of the pandemic, both fathers and mothers left the labor force at similar rates, but by November nearly all fathers had returned to work while mothers continued to stay out of work. The impact to working mothers is true nationally, but even more so here in Minnesota. Labor force participation among mothers with young children dropped 11.1 percentage points in Minnesota compared with 3.7 percentage points nationally. This is due to the significantly higher female participation in the labor force that has sustained in MSP and Minnesota for many years. As the Regional Indicators Dashboard shows, the MSP region has consistently had the highest percentage of women who are working in our peer set every year that data has been tracked in the Dashboard.
We’ve long considered our high female labor participation an asset here in MSP, but in order to continue to see the benefits of having this great talent base we have to support women, particularly working mothers, as they navigate return to work this year. Opening up our schools is a significant step toward opening a door back into employment that has been closed for nearly a year. And some additional good news is that employer hiring demand is up. The number of new job postings in December reached over 60,000, a 21.1% increase over the number of new postings one year prior and a notable uptick from the previous month. Look for more insights into hiring trends in the coming weeks as we partner with RealTime Talent to breakdown the job posting trends from 2020.
Want to see the latest data and insights on economic recovery in MSP? Check out the MSP Regional Recovery Hub. The Hub is in beta, which means we are actively working to enhance the functionality to make sure it works for you. If you have any questions or feedback on the Recovery Hub, or would like to learn more about getting involved contact Amanda Taylor, Vice President of Research & Intelligence.