Through the Forge North initiative powered by the GREATER MSP Partnership, partners across the Minneapolis-Saint Paul startup and innovation ecosystem set goals for the region, including in the area of racial equity.

The horrific killing of George Floyd moved many of these partners to call for even more immediate action. The Forge North Leadership Council called on the region's startup, tech, and business communities to pledge to take meaningful action that advances racial equity in their organizations across Minneapolis-Saint Paul. In just a few days, nearly 200 leaders have pledged their support for building a more equitable startup and business community. 

Today, a broad coalition of Twin Cities counties, chambers of commerce, community development agencies and other partners are announcing Business4Business Minneapolis-Saint Paul (B4B MSP), a regional coalition that aims to build a local support network to help small businesses survive and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and other challenges facing our small business community.

The B4B MSP coalition will connect small businesses harmed by COVID-19 with local resources from public agencies and private sector partners, including technical and financial assistance to provide immediate relief and boost long-term recovery efforts.

This week the GREATER MSP intel team is reporting on the April jobs report for the MSP region. The significant decline in jobs and an increase in unemployment is record-breaking for the regional economy, but there is a glimmer of hope that the MSP metro’s May report, which has a delayed-release after the U.S. report, will reflect the improvement witnessed at the national level. The U.S. jobs report for May was released on Friday, finding that the economy added 2.5 million jobs and the unemployment rate fell to 13.3%. This is a slight, but welcomed, recovery from April when the U.S. experienced the largest loss of jobs on record, 20.5 million jobs.

While many may have deprioritized, or even forgotten the Census in the cyclone of COVID-19, Minnesota continues to hold the number one spot in national response rates. Still, many communities in our region are undercounted. These historically undercounted groups include people of color, indigenous people, undocumented immigrants, and low-income persons. A complete count is critical because the results of the 2020 Census will affect community funding and congressional representation. To learn more about our region's leadership in responding to the Census and the challenges we face to get a true complete count, read this week's blog.

Projected to be the largest ethnic minority in the state, the Latinx community is facing unique challenges magnified by COVID-19. Minneapolis Council Member Cano shares insights from Ward 9 about how local leaders can help.

In Peter’s conversation with Jessica Mogilka this week, we learned that there is a great deal of uncertainty about what is to come for the office market. We do know there is inevitable disruption which will force organizations to make critical choices about their utilization of office space. The GREATER MSP intel team is tracking expert insights and applying regional office market data to understand potential disruptions due to COVID-10, including Greater MSP regional submarket dynamics and changing office space demand.  

Jessica Mogilka, executive vice president at JLL, shares practical tips for employers and employees as they think about reentering the workplace, and offers insights from a recent workplace survey about how office as we knew it is changing.

Each month, GREATER MSP releases an overview of key economic indicators for the region that corresponds with state and federal monthly jobs reports, the MSP Economic Pulse. This weekly we’re breaking down the March MSP Economic Pulse to give a taste of how we’ll be able to monitor monthly changes relative to the COVID-19 impact moving forward over the next several months. The March report shows that MSP started to see declining employment and a rising unemployment rate, despite the fact that survey reference periods predated many COVID-19 related business and school closures that occurred late in the month.

General Mills has been an anchor of our region's headquarters economy and of our globally significant food & ag industry. Founded over 150 years ago, General Mills has successfully managed through crises in the past, while supplying food the world needs. In this video, Jeff Harmening shares his approach to solving the short-term demands of COVID-19, while accelerating commitments to long-term goals with global impacts. Additionally, he stresses the importance of cross-sector collaboration to our region's recovery.