A labor shortage in Minnesota? C’mon, you say.
Headlines tell us it will be years before jobs lost in the recession return—and that many never will. Most experts say it will be 2013 or 2014 before unemployment regains its historical equilibrium at around 6 percent.
Tom Gillaspy, the state demographer for Minnesota for the past 30 years, doesn’t disagree. But he also wants us to wrap our minds around a larger, long-term problem: a looming labor shortage in Minnesota. By 2020, he says, the state will see its slowest rate of labor force growth ever. The implications will be far reaching and will touch every employer in the state. Gillaspy draws a parallel to Japan, where an aging and shrinking work force has contributed to two decades of recession.
Gillaspy, along with State Economist Tom Stinson, spoke on October 1 at the 14th annual Minnesota Development Conference, sponsored by the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development. Charts accompanying this article were part of their presentation and paint a stark picture of the challenges ahead.
To overcome them, Gillaspy suggests we’ll have to overcome another trend: “We seem to be increasingly polarized. And not just politically, but regionally and socially and in many other respects. The people in the central cities have no clue as to what is going on in Greater Minnesota, and the people in Greater Minnesota have little clue about what is going in suburban Minnesota.”
Having grown up in Texas, done master’s and PhD studies in Pennsylvania, and lived for a time in California, Gillaspy has seen “three states that did not work,” he says. By contrast, Minnesota made a reputation—pushing several decades ago to develop its education system, labor force, and economy—as “the place that works.” Past efforts won’t offset the coming labor shortage, Gillaspy says, “but the good news is that, as a state, we know how to do this.”
SW: What’s most important to know about Minnesota’s population in 2020?
TG: We’ll all be 10 years older. May not sound like rocket science, but as a society we’re getting older. This is a new thing. Individuals have always gotten older. But it’s not normal for society, any society, to get older. This is a whole new concept.
