Competitiveness requires adaptation. The MSP Regional Indicators Dashboard was first developed in 2015 with input from hundreds of leaders across dozens of institutions in Minnesota to provide a shared fact base for understanding our region’s economy. A decade later, the GREATER MSP Partnership is excited to publish a refreshed version of the Dashboard that will strengthen our partnership’s understanding of our assets and opportunities in an evolving economy. This letter outlines some of the major data and design changes you’ll see in the 2026 MSP Regional Indicators Dashboard. 

New datapoints shed light on current priorities 

New data sources, analytical capabilities, and economic priorities have spurred updates to the data shown in the Dashboard. This includes: 

Top-50 ranks 

The MSP region competes for workers and business investment with a wide array of regions. Gathering data on the 50 largest metros, including smaller but fast-growing regions like Raleigh, Columbus, and Salt Lake City, makes it easier to see how the MSP region's performance stacks up over time. 

Refocused categories 

• A reorganized “Economic Growth” category focuses attention on the regional challenge of slowing economic growth.  
• A new “Economic Inclusion” category deepens our understanding of how economic opportunity is distributed in our region. 
• A new “Affordability” category offers insight on how costs compare between regions. 
• An “Infrastructure” category has been renamed “Access and Connectivity” to emphasize the outcomes that quality infrastructure enables in our economy.  

New and revised indicators 

In the Economic Inclusion category, the Dashboard establishes two new definitions of quality jobs and a labor market inequality measure. 

• Living wage jobs pay enough for an adult to support themselves, based on estimates from the MIT Living Wage Calculator. A living wage in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area is defined as $24.47 per hour or about $50,000 annually in 2026. 
• Family-sustaining jobs pay enough for two working adults with two children to cover basic expenses, based on estimates from the MIT Living Wage Calculator. A family-sustaining wage in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area is defined as $33.86 per hour or about $70,000 annually in 2026. 
• The 90th-to-10th-percentile income ratio compares earnings for a worker earning near the top of the pay scale and one earning near the bottom, with a lower ratio indicating a more equal labor market.  

In the Affordability category: 

• Permitted housing units provide an early signal of which regions are building enough to prevent housing costs from skyrocketing with new growth. 
• The Cost of Living Index enables direct comparison of living costs between regions. 
• The median cost of childcare offers insight into a major driver of high costs for families in the region. 

In the Access and Connectivity category 

• The share of regional jobs accessible within 30 minutes by car and by transit illustrate how effectively existing transportation networks connect workers to jobs. 
• The share of highway miles rated “acceptable” uses a federal dataset to enable peer benchmarking on road quality for the first time. 

In the Livability category: 

• Life expectancy focuses attention on a foundational measure of well-being.  
• The share of arts & entertainment jobs provides a strong proxy measure for our region’s cultural assets, which are critical to livability. 

Depth on inclusion trends.  

In a region as diverse and historically unequal as ours, evaluating gaps between white residents and residents of color alone can obscure important storylines and insights into how inclusive our economic systems are across different communities. As a result, the Dashboard tests a new approach that disaggregates data by race and ethnicity for select indicators, elevating our shared understanding of positive and negative trends for inclusion. 

A refreshed design improves readability 

The 2026 Dashboard introduces a refreshed visual design intended to make Dashboard insights even more accessible to regional leaders. This includes: 

• A new section that summarizes the MSP region’s overall rank for each Dashboard category against the 50 largest regions, with all indicator ranks weighted equally. 
• Use of color to reveal year-over-year changes. In this refreshed design, datapoints in green signal movement in a positive direction from the previous year, red signals movement in a negative direction, and blue signals no change. 
• Year-over-Year values reveal the magnitude of changes. For the first time, the Dashboard shows Year over Year values, providing close readers with insight into how much a given indicator has moved since the previous year.   

The refinements to the 2026 MSP Regional Indicators Dashboard were collectively developed over the past year thanks to input from dozens of leaders, data experts, and other stakeholders in the GREATER MSP Partnership. Data projects like these are active, not passive, initiatives, intended to provide new understanding of our region that sparks action. We believe the evolution of this tool is one critical step to improve the capabilities of leaders across the GREATER MSP Partnership to advance our mission to accelerate regional competitiveness and inclusive economic growth for the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area. If you find this tool valuable, we encourage you to use it, share it, and connect with the GREATER MSP Partnership to explore ways that you can help build the economy that we all deserve.