I’ve written about the work of the folks at the Jobs Now Coalition in St. Paul in the past. Basically, they’re doing research and spreading the word that the jobs currently being created in rural economies do not pay the bills for average families, which makes positive employment statistics cited by the government fairly misleading. I normally don’t post press releases verbatim, but this one has been sitting in my inbox for a week and I haven’t had the heart to delete it without sharing the contents.
Greater Minnesota Job Seekers Outnumber Job Openings by Three-to-One
The latest Job Vacancy Survey shows that in Greater Minnesota there now are 61,000 job seekers competing for only 20,000 unfilled jobs. This means that job seekers outnumber unfilled jobs by three-to-one. *
Other major findings for Greater Minnesota include:
- Forty percent of job openings are in four large occupational groups—sales, food preparation/serving, transportation/material moving, and healthcare support. The combined median wage for these groups is $8.20 per hour.
- Two-thirds of job openings require no education or training beyond high school.
- One out of four openings pay less than $7.75 per hour.
The median (50th percentile) wage for Greater Minnesota job openings is $10.00 per hour. JOBS NOW’s Cost of Living in Minnesota research shows that in a Greater Minnesota family of four with both parents working, each worker must earn at least $10.58 per hour to meet basic needs. **
I’m not trying to be overly negative here. Lord knows the recession talk is everywhere. But I do agree with the notion that we need to judge the health of our economy not by a series of numbers and indexes, but by the quality of life — as best we can judge it — of people who work hard and play by the rules. That’s a story that’s often overlooked here on my native Iron Range and in other rural parts of the state. Poverty is generational and often independent of what is an otherwise hearty work ethic. When hard working people can’t pay for housing, food and transportation, there’s a problem.
And the solution is … well, that’s the question, isn’t it?
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